What your sin looks like to God

The smell was overpowering.  It was the smell of rot, of sickness, of death.  It was everywhere I walked and wouldn't leave my nose no matter what.  I was in a place of absolute despair, a hopeless, joyless, dark place where people and animals alike simply await death.  It could come today, tomorrow, or next week, and was the only thing to look forward to.  Overpowering death.

The average person who attends church, even semi-regularly, knows the right things to say about the tarnish that our personal sin brings to our life.  We will speak on the separation that it brings between us and God, the ugliness of it, the hopelessness it brings when we live our lives in it.  But there is a difference between repeating what we have heard in church and in seeing it with our own eyes.  When what we know goes from our head and transfers into our heart, we begin to see things differently.  We begin to see things as God sees them, and in that God can change the way we look at life.

I had such an experience recently in Iquitos, Peru that I will share with you in this post.  It was significant because it showed me what my sin looks like to the Lord, and it showed me what Jesus did to bring me out of it.  I share it with you in the hope that you will process these images as I did and will do something about it.  When you and I begin to see things as God sees them, we are changed, we are healed, and we are come alive for the first time.

Iquitos is a busy city of over 400,000 people situated on the Amazon river in Peru.  It can only be reached by airplane or via a very long boat trip.  This has given the city a unique history that unfortunately includes significant depravity.  Just as many sinful things are done in the dark, this city has thrived as a center of the sex-tourism industry for some time because it is so isolated from the rest of the world.  This industry, particularly as it manifests itself in Iquitos, involves terrible acts that I will not describe here.  Along with that, heavy drug use and debilitating poverty have followed closely behind this city's focus on sin.  In spite of this there is a lot of regular tourism in the city due to its proximity to the Amazon river and the jungle.  There are places where tourists go and there are places where tourists are encouraged to avoid going.  Our team went into one of those unvisitable places called Belen.

Belen is along the waterfront and consists of shacks built up high to stay mostly above the yearly flooding from the river.  Other "homes" are built on logs and are designed to float when the river rises.  Many of the homes have a floating outhouse built over the water.  Nearby the outhouses one will see people bathing in the same river water, washing their clothes in it, or gathering water for cooking and drinking.  The homes have no doors or windows.  They may have a table and a few chairs in them, but little else.  This part of the city is essentially a waterfront slum.

Into the worst part of the worst place

Our destination was near the waterfront into the worst part of the worst place.  We were going to minister to the drug addicts that lived in the slum below the raised houses.

We were transported down to Belen on a three wheeled cart referred to as a Motokar.  When we arrived, we stepped onto a wet, grimy street.  Vendors line the streets selling everything from bananas to raw meat, all out in the open.  Other vendors cook food and handle it without gloves or clean utensils.  Vultures circle overhead, occasionally bold enough to land and pick at a dead dog or cat on the street.  Huge numbers of discarded, rotting bananas are piled up near the waterfront.  The stench is powerful.

We began the journey by descending a large group of concrete stairs, covered in places by green slime.  One has to watch their step going down because the slime is slippery.  We paused under a house halfway down the steps to circle up and pray.  The missionary reminded us all that we were there to show love to those who are unloved, cast off, and forgotten.  We prayed to the Lord, the source of love, for help with this.  We prayed asking that we would be a blessing to the people there, and we prayed that the people would receive the good news about Jesus.

Shortly afterward we continued down the steps, each carrying sacks of sandwiches for the people.  We crossed a huge puddle in the filthy street that could only be crossed by walking on a wet board laid across it.  We then turned a corner.  Around the corner we saw people everywhere who were hanging around in shops and in the street.  They were dirty and had a dull look in their eyes that marked despair in their lives.  And then we reached the entrance to the worst part of the worst place.

It was an opening between the stilts of a house and it led down a dark corridor.  After passing under one house we found ourselves under a second house where we found a large group of people who were recovering from last night's drug binge.  They were dirty.  Some had slept on the ground or on a platform.  A man lit a cigarette containing a less pure and more dangerous version of crack cocaine.  Skinny dogs rummaged through the trash piled high everywhere.  A large pig was penned up in a corner away from any hope of sunlight.  The stench was overpowering.  Vultures rested on boards that had been nailed between house stilts and they picked through the trash, eyeing the people who had come into their realm.  An evil presence was tangible in this place.  And in the eyes of the men and women there I saw death.  They had given up and had nothing to live for.  Nobody had voiced that to me, but they didn't need to.

We passed out the sandwiches and were quickly mobbed by hungry people.  We poured drinks for them and talked to them as we could and as they would allow.  Beyond providing food, our plan was pretty simple.  We would share the good news about Jesus Christ to these men and ask them for a response.  We also planned to offer help to them out of their life of drug addiction.  If anyone would take us up on the offer, we would personally escort them to a safe house and rehabilitation clinic in the city.

Rejection

After feeding them our leader began preaching about Jesus.  Instantly about two-thirds of the people headed for the exits.  But he kept up, telling them in Spanish about Jesus and His great love for them.  He told them the story of his life, about how he had formerly been one of them.  And they knew he spoke the truth because many of them remember the way he used to be.  He was a legend in these parts, but not for the right reasons.

He finished and introduced Pastor Paul and I was thrown front and center with the reluctant audience.  I told them the story described in one of Jesus's parables from Matthew 13 about a man who planted a good crop only to later discover that weeds had grown up with the crop.  It was a story about God and how he knows which people are His followers, and which are not.  It is a story about what will happen at the end of time when He returns.

I explained to the men what the parable meant using words that Jesus used.  The farmer in the story represented Jesus, the farm workers were His angels, the good crop of wheat represented the followers of Jesus, and the weeds were the evil people who rejected God's ways and wouldn't follow Him.  I explained to them that Jesus shows compassion to the world by waiting until He is able to draw in the most people who will believe.  He could end it all right now, but He does not because He does not want anyone to choose a life forever separated from Him.

I asked them for a response.  Who would step forward to receive Jesus and leave this ugly life?  All that is required is belief!  God would do the rest, and He does not want them to continue in this type of living!

I was met with a response of silence.  Several men had listened intently to the story but none would acknowledge belief.  They remained seated among the death and despair, enslaved.

What our sin looks like to God

Our leader went back to speaking and I had a moment to take in the scene.  Around me were sitting men who were clearly under the influence.  Others were recovering from last night and appeared dazed.  The trash, the filth, the evil, the stench...everything was overwhelming in that moment.  A vulture sitting high above all of his peers opened his wings and turned his head sideways to look at me.  He seemed to say "this is my realm."  And so it was.  His was a realm of death and disease and despair, and there was no hope to be seen anywhere.  And I saw a picture, a visual representation at that moment, of my spiritual condition apart from Jesus.

The problem many Americans have is that they cannot relate to imagery like this.  Most have never lived in or even seen anything that even closely resembles a slum.  Worse yet, many churchgoing Americans seem to believe that sins can be ranked.  A murderer, for example, is much worse than someone who just drinks too heavily.  A child rapist is worse than someone who merely looks at pornography.  A thief is worse than someone who cannot bear to miss a meal or who eats too much.  But that just is not the case in God's eyes.  Sin is sin.  It is all vile and repulsive.  Our sin separates us hopelessly from God.  It is, all of it, a terminal disease that will eventually take the life of the one who holds onto it.

For you and your sins it looks no different to God.  Even if you go to church each week, you still sin each and every day.  It could be that you steal from your workplace by taking supplies or not working when you are on the clock.  Or your personal idol may be money.  You worship it by shopping all of the time, or by dreaming of getting the next big gadget, or by trusting it to bail you out of hardship or difficulty instead of relying on God.  You may be one of the countless Americans who look at pornography in private.  Nobody knows about it but you and God, so it is a secret, right?  Or maybe your work is your idol.  You sacrifice to it by giving all of your time to it, never leaving much to your family or loved ones.  Your entire significance comes from your work, and you wouldn't know what to do if your job evaporated.

All of these things and more are sins.  They separate you from God.  And to God, you are the one sitting in the middle of a slum with vultures eyeing you.  The garbage heap all around you is composed of the many sins you have committed all your life.  You can sweep them into piles and try to tidy them up, but they don't go away.  The pile just gets higher and smellier. 

For many churchgoers, you have added to the piles of garbage with all of the good things you have done to try to appease God and get Him on your side.  Yet you have never really believed and allowed God to change your life.  To a casual observer, your life is no different now than it was when you said that you decided to follow Jesus.  There is no life change;  no fruit. 

The prophet Isaiah once said that our righteous deeds, on their own as a vehicle to get us on God's side, are like menstrual rags. 

Isaiah 64:6
 ⁶ We are all infected and impure with sin.
    When we display our righteous deeds,
    they are nothing but filthy rags.
Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall,
    and our sins sweep us away like the wind.

If the good things you do to justify yourself to God are of that quality to the Lord, what must your sin look like?  Yet you continue with the mentality of doing a mission trip here, a good deed there, an act of service sporadically done, and these will surely appease God and put you on his good side.  You sit on the garbage heap, and you think everything is okay.  Your eyes show you a world that isn't that bad, and you don't know any differently.  God's eyes see a different story.  His eyes see things as they really are.

Jesus meets you in your personal slum

I quickly realized that what we did in going into this slum is the exact thing Jesus did when He came into each of our lives. 

At some time in everyone's life Jesus walks into the mess and the filth, walking among our piles of garbage.  This usually comes in the form of a friend who follows Jesus who cares enough to speak to you about faith.  Sometimes it may come in the form of a dream about a man who beckons you to follow.  For others, they first perceive that there may be a Creator by seeing the works of His hands all around them. 

Romans 1
¹⁹ They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. ²⁰ For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

He locks eyes with you and suddenly the darkness you were sitting in is filled with light from Him.  And He communicates truth and love and invites you out of the filth, offering to bandage the wounds life has provided, requiring a bath and offering us a change of clothes.  The only thing you have to do is stand up and follow Him out of the place of despair and death.  The past can really be in the past, and the future really can be different.  Following Him out of this place puts you on a narrow, difficult path, and the journey lasts a lifetime.  Often that path is more difficult than the path your life was on beforehand, but the end result is more than worth it.  He leads us to life and love.  And everyone gets to choose.  Some choose to follow;  others stay in the filth. 

I have long had appreciation for what Jesus did for me when He came into my life, but I have never seen it represented so vividly as I did on that day.  I, the one on the trash heap, hopeless and in despair but not really knowing it.  I, the one who is unable to get on God's good side by doing anything on my own.  And He, the One I waited for my whole life, the fulfillment of love and source of love.  The One who came into the mess of my life to invite me to a better one and to lead me.  The King who stooped to lift me up, not because He had to, but because He wanted to.  The leader who went the way and showed the way.  The King of all kings and Lord of all lords.

Some of you reading this have already chosen to leave the filth you were in.  Maybe it was drugs or sexual perversion or some other unnamed thing.  You all had your own personal slum that Jesus is leading you away from.  The path is tough and will likely have more difficult parts.  I encourage you to keep walking and keep surrendering more of your life to Him.  The end result is worth it.  He is the end result. 

Still others who are reading this still sit amid the piles of filth and grime and disease.  The vultures eye you greedily.  And you sit, sometimes proudly or perhaps in despair of life itself, and you won't get up.  It isn't so bad, you say.  Things may get better.  And in sitting you reject the one who calls out to you to leave the mess.  Life is ahead!  But you just won't get up because you won't believe or because the road ahead is uncertain.  I encourage you to get up and walk!  Find a friend who knows Jesus for real and talk to that person about what you need to do.  Your next steps of committing your life to Him are simple, but they are not easy.  A real Christian friend can show you the way.

I pray that these words will deeply impact those in the Church who need them as well as those outside of the Church.  You both sit on a trash pile, but there is a way out.

Coming Full Circle: A Teardown and Rebuild Job

John 12:24-25 New Living Translation (NLT)

John 12:24-25 New Living Translation (NLT)

²⁴ I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. ²⁵ Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. 

Over the last two weeks I have been transitioning back to Houston, my homeland and hometown.  I haven't often thought of it this way but I've spent most of my life right here.  I grew up in the elementary school years in Kingwood, them moved to Dallas and later to Lubbock for school.  After Lubbock I was intent on not going back to Houston, yet I wound up there after graduation so I could go to graduate school at the University of Houston.  In my wisdom at the time, I swore it would be just for a couple of years and then we would go somewhere else.  A full twelve years later, I followed God's call to Everett, Washington.  Now after 5 years, He has called us back to Houston.

It is so interesting to me that God would bring our family full-circle, coming right back to the city we left.  I remember telling numerous people who asked me over the last 5 years that I didn't see God ever taking us back to Texas.  I always described Seattle as the first step in God's journey and imagined other destinations, perhaps even outside of the United States in our future.  It seems God has His own plans.  And in a sense I was right at the time.  Seattle and the Pacific Northwest were just the first step in God's plan to tear down and completely rebuild me.  That is what He always seeks to do, to make things new in you and I.  It isn't a renovation.  It's a complete teardown and rebuild job.

God's Training Ground

I have begun to view Everett as a training ground, and it certainly was.  Language teachers will tell you that the most effective and fastest way to learn a new language is through immersion, where a person is in a culture and has to speak the language to communicate.  For those who want to learn Spanish, they move to Mexico and live there and interact with people on very basic things such as where things are located.  For those who want to learn how to relate to people who are different from them, they go live among those people.  Everett to me was this type of thing.

We faced many things in Everett that we had never seen before, many of them good and many bad.  And God used all of those to bring us to a place where we saw people through His eyes.  We lived in the middle of a vibrant and established city among families who had lived there for generations.  Making friends in such a situation is hard because no matter what, you are an outsider.  Relationships have been formed prior to you being there, so in many ways by many people we were seen as an oddity for quite some time.  I would say some there even viewed us with suspicion because they knew why we had moved up from Texas.  There have been many who have moved to the Northwest in an effort to "Christianize" it, so I think some felt we were just the latest wave.  Overall we were an unknown and might as well have been from another planet.  And in many ways I felt as though we were on another planet.  Things were so different.  Culture was so different.  Yet daily I woke up pinching myself and considered myself lucky to be there in Everett.

Our immersion experience in the new culture of Everett did not just end with merely forming new relationships with others.  We were forced to grasp with many things we had never seen before in our sheltered previous life.  We saw the effect that hard drugs have on people who you would never suspect of being users.  Certainly drugs were on the streets and the homeless population in Everett in large ways has been enslaved by them.  We regularly found used needles on the streets and in the parks where our kids played.  It was not unusual to see someone on the street who was completely gone, zombie-like, living only for the next high.  We saw it in neighbors and friends and watched drugs destroy families.  Witnessing these things has marked me deeply, so mush so that recently a friend made a joke about drug use and I found myself attacking him over it.  It was one of those moments where you take a step back and say "where did that come from?"  And I had to apologize.  Yet in that moment I recognized the deep effect it had on me.

Seeing God in a New Way

I saw God do something quite unexpected after we had lived there for several years.  He had made it to where we began to get connected in our community.  Amanda volunteered full-time at the local elementary school where my sons attended, and I worked as a principal in the same district.  We didn't really do these to find some way in with people.  This wasn't some strategy we cooked up.  It just happened naturally.  We made friends, learned how people thought and why they think that way and what gets them excited and what fires them up.  We shared their joys and their pain and walked through life together.  And we came to love them for who they are and where they are in life.  They became our people and we became their people.  Many did not know Jesus, some thought they did, and it mattered to us.  Yet even for those who wouldn't listen to the message, we loved them anyway.  And we enjoyed our time with them and thought that it would never end.

All along the way God was with us.  When He told us to go to the Northwest, we went with joy knowing that God was going ahead of us.  We relied heavily on Him in the first few months to provide for us, and He did.  We never were without food or shelter.  Even when I felt like a failure as a Dad as we met as a family in an aisle of Hobby Lobby in Everett, homeless, jumping from hotel to hotel, God intervened and showed me the way out of that.  We saw Him working in the churches we were a part of.  We saw what He was doing through kids and joined Him in creating Kid's Club, an after-school program intended to reach unchurched kids.  And we met with Him in the low times when things didn't make sense.  On dark days where we felt void of purpose or the energy to go on, God was there.  He met me many times on mountaintops and near rivers when I would go just to walk and sit with Him.  He was there to put an arm around me on my hard days when I cried out to Him, begging Him to provide relief from the pain I felt in ministry and in life.  He spoke clearly to me in so many quiet moments alone with Him, often reassuring me that I was never alone and that He loved me.  He listened as I would complain about circumstances I faced.  He stayed awake with me on the countless nights where I could not sleep due to high stress at work.  The God that I had known things about became the God that is Father to me.  And it was not He who changed;  it was me.

Kings and Queens of Narnia

Every time I passed our house in Everett or walked out the front door, I would consider the lamppost in our front yard which was imported some time ago from the great city of London.  Its image reminded me of the lamppost from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  In the story, four kids discover a magical world by exploring deeply in an old forgotten wardrobe in their house.  The entry to this world was at a lamppost.  These four had many adventures in this new land, including being directly involved in defeating an evil queen who had ruled the land for a long time.  They grew up in the land and in adulthood eventually ruled as kings and queens.  They formed strong bonds with those around them and had a fulfilling life filled with purpose and meaning and liberty.  Much later in life while on a hunt they rediscovered the forgotten lamppost and found their way back into the wardrobe in their world.  They even went from being adults to becoming kids again, and they found the world they had left in the same place it had been when they had left it.  But they had changed.  They were children in body only, and mentally and emotionally had become something far different, and greater.

In much the same way our family has returned to Texas as changed people.  We are a little older and perhaps a little wiser.  I do not view the world the same way that I used to.  I do not look at people the same way either.  And I certainly do not think of God the same way.  God used the experience to change us and to make us new and to help us learn more about how to walk in relationship with Him.  We are different people than the ones who left Houston five years ago.

I expect the next adventure will have many of the same qualities that the first one had.  We will have ups and downs, will experience joy and pain, gain and loss.  And God will be there with us wherever we go.  He has promised me that and reminded me already many times that He is with me.  I now have the attitude that I would rather go through all of that, with Jesus, than to say no and miss what He has for me.  Jesus is worth it.

It has been hard to leave the Northwest, harder in fact than it was to leave Houston five years ago.  We have a deep emotional investment in that part of the world and particularly with its people.  Truly God has asked us to do a very hard thing in coming back.  And my heart breaks for those who do not know Jesus and who reject him with their lifestyle and actions.  Many, many people there have no relationship with God.  Many think they know Jesus yet there is no evidence in their lives.  Yet many are curious, which gives me hope.  And Jesus has not left the Northwest.  He has remained behind and continues to be quite active there, working through many dear and faithful servants on a daily basis.  The few Christians that are there are far more committed than many Christians in the south.  There is always hope where He is present and working through His servants who are surrendered to Him.

What about you?

I am hopeful that my reflections on the last five years have stirred something in you.  Many of us think too small when we look for God's work in our lives.  I still hear people say they are looking for God's leading on where they work, where they live, and in their financial lives.  None of those things are bad or wrong, but the context of it is very important. 

Are you looking for a new job because you are dissatisfied with your current one?  Are you not making the money you want to make or you are having trouble getting along with people there? 

With regard to where you live, do you want to move because you want a bigger house in "that" neighborhood? 

With finances, do you desire to see change because you are spending too much and want someone to save you from yourself? 

These difficulties often are not a sign that God wants you to change your context.  In fact, He may instead want to change you and keep you in your current circumstances.

I believe God is challenging us right now to truly throw caution to the wind.  He wants us to pray bold prayers that He would make us better followers, that we would have greater sensitivity to His Spirit, and that we would follow wherever He says to go.  He is looking for servants who will be filled with and follow His Spirit every hour of every day. If you and I achieve this type of relationship with Him, nothing will be the same.  He might take you to a different part of the world, but His real goal is to do a complete tear-down and rebuild.  He will do what needs to be done to make that happen whether it is moving you to a different place or keeping you where you are with a new focus on Him.  If we will just let God have complete control of everything, He will make us into people who will truly carry the Good News into this world in authentic ways.  He will cause us to live in such a way that people will look at us and recognize there is something different and better and God-sized.  He will turn you and I into people who LIVE the Good News.

I challenge you to turn your life over to God in that way today.  I don't pretend to have that all figured out, but I am certain that the Lord wants daily surrender from us, and that in that, we will see Him train us, change us, and will move in unexpected God-sized ways that are unmistakable to us and to those around us.  Will you make that commitment today?

The Terrifying Wildnerness: How God Teaches Us to Trust

 

The great and terrifying wilderness of Olympic National Park, where you can hike for days without seeing anyone.

¹⁹ “Then, just as the Lord our God commanded us, we left Mount Sinai and traveled through the great and terrifying wilderness, as you yourselves remember, and headed toward the hill country of the Amorites.  Deuteronomy 1:19 (NLT)

Walking through life as a follower of Jesus is very hard at times.  Some teachers out there would say that His deepest desire for you and me is that we be rich, or that we be successful, or that we have everything in life that we want.  In His goodness, often we do receive those things, but these are not the things that Jesus actually wants for us.  He has a larger goal for you and me that I will talk about here.  Prosperity in our lives could be seen as the icing on the cake, but it most certainly is not the cake.

Recently we have gone through a lot of emotional difficulty as a family as we prepare to move back to Texas to start full-time ministry.  The initial wave of good feelings about the future have given way to a long period of waiting, which has given way to an extended period of saying goodbye to a lot of people that we love and care about.  Daily it seems we have had to say goodbye to someone, answer more questions about why we are going, and then in the evening deal with the emotions as a family since each of us have had a similar experience.  The result has been a rising tide of sorrow and a sense of loss, with little time to grapple with it personally until waking up the next day to deal with it all over again.  That "why" question coming from others has gradually developed into a "why" question in my own heart.  Why, God, does it have to be so hard?  Why does it have to hurt so much?

On top of that we have dealt personally and emotionally with countless people coming to see our house yet not a demonstrate a shred of real interest.  We have had people come to see it multiple times who have indicated that they'd make an offer on it, yet they and the offer disappeared in the wind.  We've had numerous people come to see it who apparently just wanted to look at a pretty house, displacing our family over and over again so they could get a tour.  And still nothing happens, and inside of me the dad and husband screams that we still are seemingly unable to find a place of our own in Texas until this place is moved!  God, why are you doing this?  Why do we have to go through this?  Is there not an easier way?

Lately God has had me take a lot of walks around our neighborhood to just talk with Him.  And in the mornings He has had me read a lot from scripture that directly relates to our situation.  On our walks, I have started with very formal prayers to Him only to be interrupted by his gentle prompting of "just talk to me Paul."  In my reading, instead of going from chapter to chapter in the Bible, He has had me fixate on individual verses that have shown me that He is aware of my situation and that He is with us.  I'm discovering as I spend more time with God that that is His way.  While most of my life I have expected and deserved for him to come to me with a club, He instead comes to me with a whisper, an arm around my shoulder, and a listening ear.

What it looked like for Israel

When Israel was told to move on from Egypt, they had been in slavery for 400 years.  Conditions were not good and many of them were beaten and worked to death.  They were provided food and shelter, but life was about working for their slave masters who had developed a fearful attitude toward their people.  In steps Moses, who God had directed to go talk to Pharaoh, and when Moses obeyed things got tougher for the Israelites and for Moses.  Eventually Pharaoh relented and let the Israelites go, but they were then chased through the wilderness and had their backs to the sea and their fronts confronted by the world's most powerful army.  After they were improbably delivered through the sea, they wandered in the desert and eventually made it to the brink of the Promised Land.  Instead of taking immediate possession of it, they sent in spies, who discouraged the people about it instead of spurring them on, and they had to wander in the desert for 40 more years before they could actually enter the land.

Along the journey of Israel, I want you to see what they faced.  Their initial state in Egypt was bad, but when they obeyed God things got worse and worse and worse.  When they seemingly were released from it all, they were placed into an impossible and inescapable situation by the Red Sea and had gone from worse to...terrifying.  When they were delivered from that situation, they had to wander through the "great and terrifying wilderness."

Having spent a lot of time backcountry camping, the phrase "great and terrifying wilderness" has a lot of meaning for me.  When you are in the wilderness it can be a terrifying experience simply because you are there.  You bring in your own food in your pack but rely on the land for your water.  Last year, in fact, I went on an extended stretch of a hike where we could find no water, and dread grew so much that I eventually couldn't see anything around me except the lack of water.  The Israelites were crossing a desert land that had no water at all and certainly was a far cry from being farmland.  There was no food and no water, and they likely saw in all directions an arid landscape filled with scrubby plants, absolutely desolate.  There were not bubbling pools nearby.  Instead it is likely they had to walk by many dried up pools, sun-baked and cracked, providing the memory of water but not the refreshment of it.  An empty horizon in the wilderness can also drain you of hope.  Yet they were not alone during that time, although they seemingly forgot about that.

God had purpose in all of this for the Israelites just as He has purpose for you and me.  Since there was no food for the people, God had to provide it Himself, and provide He did.  But he only provided what they needed for that day in the form of Manna, which covered the ground like dew in the morning.  They could collect it when they woke up, but if they stored extra up it would rot.  At the end of each day they had nothing left.  When they needed water which was always unavailable, they were provided it from a rock.  The need was there, God provided in the moment, and then they would have to move on to another place that had no water.  

What's the point?

Jesus said that we are worth more than many sparrows, yet it is unlikely that even sparrows could last in the great and terrifying wilderness.  So when He leads us into this type of place, what does it all mean?  What is the point?  

In the wilderness places of life we are able to survive because God provides. We improbably make it through the land because of God's provision.  We live another day because He sustains us in the wilderness.  And in it all, we meet God on a whole new level.  We see that He cares deeply, so deeply in fact that He is willing to plunge us down an illogical path that is fraught with fear and danger and the scent of death so that we will know Him more.  That is what he wants.  Not prosperity, though He gives it, nor health, though He allows that, nor success, though He may provide even that.  He wants us to know Him as we would know a best friend or a spouse or someone we might call a "soul mate."  He is so deeply interested in us, so full of compassion for our condition and need of a Savior, so fully committed to our overall good, so full of love for us as if we were the only people on the entire earth.  And because of this, He knows that the path should lead through the wilderness.

His great purpose for us is this:  that we would walk in fellowship with Him and know Him and His ways and love him deeply.  That's it.  That's the thing.  And in knowing Him better we can follow Him better into deeper and darker paths where there is no light save the light He gives off in us.  His plan is that we would follow Him even if there is no path because walking with Him like this means we are wholly with Him.  In this, as He refines, whittles, and shapes you and me, His greatest work is done.  We are provided treatment for the incurable disease of sin, and are better prepared to "go make disciples of all men."

I'm not sure what "great and terrifying wilderness" God has you walking through right now.  You or someone you love may be dealing with health questions, or it could be something going on at work or in your church.  Perhaps your wilderness is a financial one that doesn't make sense or that God has asked you to do something that just doesn't make a lot of sense.  You can recognize your wilderness by its great and terrifying qualities, giving the appearance of something that could and should be avoided if there is a better way that God could simply provide.  Natural questions come up during those times of your life like "why this?" and "isn't there a different way you could take me, God?"  

You are not meant to deal with those things alone.  There is not some cosmic puzzle you are supposed to figure out that will make it all better.  Yes, God has given you an intellect for a reason, but He has also designed you with a God-sized hole in the middle, and the purpose of making you strike out into this wilderness has more to do with that hole in you than some unnamed or undiscovered strategy.  God wants you and me to rely, depend, and surrender to His ways during these times of our life.  That means you and I must spend more time with him just talking as friends, reading our Bible and considering what it is telling us, walking by ourselves and contemplating the situations, and maybe even talking to a mentor who has a deep relationship with the Lord.  

Instead of leaning away from the pain and the trials and desperately flailing our arms to try to save ourselves, we should be still and lean toward Jesus.  The wilderness we are in may not suddenly make sense, but as we relate to Jesus by spending more time with Him, we realize it doesn't have to make sense.  We realize that Jesus is absolutely trustworthy and is absolutely the greatest love we could ever have.   We then know Jesus better than we did before, which was the point all along.

Who is like the Lord?

 

Waiting: How Faith Grows

I absolutely, positively, do not like to wait.  If I am at a store and the line is long, I get impatient.  If I'm in traffic at a stoplight and can't make it through before it turns red again, I get frustrated.  If I am at a restaurant and my food doesn't come within 20 minutes, I begin looking at my watch.  If I'm warming food in the microwave I wonder why it isn't completely heated in a minute and a half!  If I order something from Amazon and have the option to get the item the same day for free, I click on that option, not because I need the item that day but because I don't want to wait!  Our society these days has made it to where we don't have to wait much for things anymore, and this has produced in me a silly tendency to get impatient every time I do have to wait for something. 

My experience since God called us back to Humble has been a lot of waiting.  Flash back to late March when He told me specifically to go back to the land of my father.  My astonishment at the call led to fear and eventually to peace and has developed into anticipation.  Yet I am in waiting mode.  I am waiting to complete my current work at Emerson, am waiting to start the new work, am waiting to pack up, waiting to end my time at Calvary Everett, and waiting to sell the house.  If you will allow me to be transparent with you, the last item on that list is the one that has bothered me the most.  The house hasn't sold yet!

When we moved up to Everett, we had a fairly quick turnaround on things in that situation too.  God called, I began applying for jobs in the Seattle area (and waiting), and when the job finally came through I had just a few weeks to wrap things up in Houston before moving here.  Had you asked me at the time I was just certain that we'd put the house on the market and that it would sell at exactly the right time.  Exactly the right time to me would have been to have the sale go through in enough time to get us a house in Everett without having any delay.  God had other plans.  We wound up in a two-bedroom apartment for several months while we waited for the house in Houston to sell.  We lived with about 10% of our possessions in the apartment and the other 90% in storage, making things work as best we could.  And it worked just fine.

My recent experience in attempting to sell the house has brought up old memories and fears that I faced the last time we went through a major cross-country move.  Where will we live?  I can't afford to pay two house payments every month, meaning we have to sell this house before we get into another one.  Will we have to move around?  Will we be in an apartment again?  Will it take a day, a week, a month, or a year or more to sell the house?  And what are we going to do if it takes a long time?  At times this type of thinking has been on my mind almost constantly and I have had to go to the Lord with it often.  And we still wait.

During my really stressed out times thinking about selling the house, the Lord has drawn me to several passages that I will share with you.

James 1

² Dear brothers and sisters,^[a] when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

⁵ If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. ⁶ But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Psalm 27
Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Who had to wait in the Bible?

Waiting on God is a significant theme of the Bible.  Abraham had to wait on God to show him where he would eventually be living, and he waited on God to bring him the child that had been promised.  Noah waited on the rain for 100 years as he built the boat God told him to build.  Joseph had to wait at least 13 years before the dream God had given him came true.  The nation of Israel had to wait a few hundred years to get released from slavery in Egypt, then they had to wait 40 more years before they actually got to enter the promised land.  Moses had to wait for 40 years before God felt he was ready to lead the Israelites.  David waited to become king.  Paul was converted to Christianity and became a powerful proponent of it, but he had to wait 3 years alone in the desert so he could be trained up by the Lord.  The list goes on and on and on.

What does God do in making us wait?

Why does God make us wait for things?  Can't he just deliver immediately and be done with it?  Of course He can.  There is no doubt in my mind that He could have given everyone listed above an immediate answer to what He had promised them.  But instead God had them wait and He is having us wait.  What's the point?

Waiting produces several important things through waiting that develop us spiritually and bring us closer to God.  First and foremost, waiting develops a deeper desire to be with the Lord and understand Him better, which is THE goal God has for your life.  We have a choice in times of waiting to go our own way which is a path littered with anxiety, worry, lots of activity to try to solve things ourself, depression, and hopelessness, or to go God's way.  Going God's way means we deliberately turn to Him and release our cares to Him, waiting patiently for His response, His deliverance, and even His presence to overwhelm us.  That's why James said that "when troubles come our way, consider it an opportunity for great joy."  Joy comes in knowing God, being known by God, relating to God in prayer, and hearing from Him through scripture reading and meditation.  Waiting and faith go hand in hand.

Waiting also develops endurance.  When I first started running recreationally, I was not able to run multiple miles in the beginning.  I remember having my goal first to simply get to one mile, and after that mile I huffed and puffed!  But several weeks later I was able to do a mile and a half, then two miles, then three, and my distance continued to increase.  By running I prepared my body by strengthening muscles, and I also developed the mental capacity to keep going even when it was uncomfortable.  

Runners will tell you that a lot of what goes into running is mental, especially when running long distances.  Just as it is with running, so it is with faith.  You won't wake up one morning with more faith.  It is developed over time by being in situations that require faith, and as you see God deliver, your faith and endurance grow.  And your faith needs to grow because right now God is preparing you for future things that will require even more faith.  Just like with running, God is putting you out on the road and making you go one mile, then two, then three.  And the whole time He is running right next to you.  He never leaves us to our own devices.

And as your endurance grows, you eventually become "perfect and complete, needing nothing."  I actually think this statement is quite significant for you and I.  This tells me that God is always working on me.  God is always preparing me for the next thing.  God is always trying to work more of Himself into my life so I push more of myself out.  As I go through difficulty, uncertainty, and discomfort, I learn to allow more of Jesus in.  Since Jesus is "perfect and complete, needing nothing," I also begin to take on those attributes because the Lord lives in me.  Does this necessarily mean that I will be a perfect person who does not sin?  Not in this life I won't.  But just as a piece of metal becomes gradually more magnetized when it spends time around a strong magnet, so you and I will become more like Jesus as we spend time with Him.  And our faith will just keep growing, meaning we will understand the Lord more and more and more as we walk through life with him.

I won't pretend to any of you that I'm now some immovable rock of faith when it comes to our upcoming move and our attempts to sell the house.  At moments I am trusting God completely and at other moments I'm very nervous and "seeing the wind and the waves" like Peter did when he walked on water with Jesus.  I'm definitely not comfortable right now and many times if I could choose to be delivered from this situation, I'd choose that!  However, the Lord continues to emphasize that this all has purpose and that I should be coming to Him with it.

What about you?

You may be waiting on the Lord to deliver you through a season of life right now.  Perhaps it is a vision He has given you for future ministry that just hasn't come to pass yet.  Perhaps it is deliverance from a health condition you have or that a family member has.  It may be a financial concern or your living conditions that you are enduring.  Whatever it is, you and I must go to the Lord with those things.  This means we must pray when we feel like it and pray when we don't feel like it.  We must seek to understand the Lord and His ways as we pray.  We also must read God's word and stop to think about what it is saying to us right now.  And as our anxiety raises and we become bothered by waiting, we should pray some more.  And remember that God already knows how you feel about things, so be honest in your prayers to Him about it just like you would be honest with a friend when you are talking to them about something bothering you.  You will discover that God is right there with you.  

Getting no immediate deliverance from your situation does not mean He has abandoned you.  It may in fact mean He is right there with you, seeing the "you" that He intends to make you into and relentlessly working toward that end.  And the end He has in mind for you and me is Himself! 

Why This? How God uses a period of your life to shape you

Ross Lake in North Cascades National Park.

Over the last few posts I have shared with you the manner and mechanism by which we have been called back to Humble, Texas.  I always want to share experiences like this so that you might examine your own life to see if the Lord has put a similar pattern in front of you.  This post will be no different, although it is reflective regarding the last 5 years.  I pray the Lord uses this post to help you recognize His work in your own life.

So what was the last 5 years in Everett about?  Why would God call our family from a place where we had friends, family, a career path, and a great church, to move to a spot over 2,000 miles away?  Why would God lead us to a place where we literally did not know a single person?  And why, then, after that same family gets rooted in the community, establishes relationships, and experiences ministry impact, would God send the family right back to where they originally came from?  It doesn't make sense at all if you just look to the surface of things, but God's ways are not our ways and you always need to look deeper at things to get even an inkling of what God is doing.  I will attempt to do that here, although I know it is not a comprehensive look at all that God has done or is doing now.

God is always preparing you for the next thing He has in mind for you.  Circumstances now are used to shape you for what you will face later.  If you and I didn't have that, we would not do well with what is coming.  If you want a plant to grow and bloom, you plant it in good soil, feed it, water it, and make sure it is not attacked by bugs.  In a way, the Lord does things in much the same manner.

In my early posts I shared a lot about what God was doing in my life at the time of our call to Everett.  I had thoughts and attitudes about what God would do with us here.  I really believed after a while that He was going to use us to plant a church here and that it would grow and flourish.  I never really had a good idea on how much, but I just assumed it would happen.  Instead, we were associated with one church that grew a bit while we were there and out of that time we formed deep relationships with some wonderful people.  Then we left to start Purpose Church and the other church eventually died later the following year.  Then three years later Purpose Church died as well, and we found ourselves working with a small church in downtown Everett.  Church ministry did not work out at all like I thought it would.

And then there is ministry itself.  When we first got here I spent a lot of time on the streets praying and attempting to talk to people about Jesus.  I thought that perhaps this would grow into something vibrant as well.  The more I did that, the more discoveries I made about homelessness and the complexity of the issue.  I had friendly encounters on the streets with people who were receptive to hearing about Jesus, and I had encounters with people who became angry and almost violent at the mention of His name.  I spoke to people who seemed like regular people, others who had mental illness, and still others who were high on hard drugs.  I no longer look at street ministry and the homeless crisis the same way.

Our family went from living in the country in the Houston area to living in the middle of a pretty vibrant city, experiencing all of the things that come with living in the city.  We have seen and experienced many things that I never even considered we would see or experience.  We lived in a community with many people who have an idea of God but no real relationship with Him and no interest to cultivate one.  We have seen parades and protests, homeless and affluent, building and burning, life and death, and it all occurred within a short distance from our own home.  All the while Amanda and I took our individual roles as workers in the community, she in PTA and my own as a school administrator, and went about our work with an eye on how Jesus would use those things.  And use those things He did, just not in the ways we would have expected!

I have been reviewing all of these things since March 19th, wondering what it was all about.  Why did God move us here and why would He move us back?  As I have thought about these things I was reminded of the Apostle Paul and what the Lord did to redirect his life from what it was to what it should be.  Paul outlines it for us in Galatians chapter 1:11-12; 16-18.

¹¹ Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the gospel message I preach is not based on mere human reasoning. ¹² I received my message from no human source, and no one taught me. Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.^[d]

When this happened, I did not rush out to consult with any human being.^{[f] 17} Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was. Instead, I went away into Arabia, and later I returned to the city of Damascus.

¹⁸ Then three years later I went to Jerusalem to get to know Peter,^[g] and I stayed with him for fifteen days.

Most people just blow right by some important details in this account which I want to draw your attention to.  Did you notice how long Paul was in the desert of Arabia?  Three full years.  This happened after he met Jesus for the first time on his way to Damascus and after he had recovered his sight.  It would have made a lot of sense to send this passionate and driven man right into ministry.  Surely his gifts would be used in a great way, immediately!  But the Lord's ways are not our ways, so instead He pulled Paul into obscurity and isolation for 3 full years before that other stuff started.  Think back to what you were doing 3 years ago on this date and you'll get some context as to how long of a period of time that is to be by yourself.

And it doesn't stop there in the Bible.  Moses also had to wait, but his wait was much longer and probably very painful.  He waited a full 40 years from the time he was driven out of Egypt to the time he came back.  During that 40 years he tended his father in law's sheep in the desert and likely considered everyday what might have been.  He had been well-positioned in the family of Pharaoh and from a human perspective it would have made a lot of sense for him to eventually be in a position of leadership over a lot of people.  Surely God will make it happen this way!  It makes sense!  And yet, God didn't do it that way, instead making Moses wait.  And yet the Moses who came out of the desert to confront Pharaoh was not the same Moses who left Egypt 40 years before.

The Oyster Dome is a high trail that overlooks Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands.  People hang glide from this spot.

As I have reflected on our time here in Everett, I have also come back to that central question:  what was this all about?  As I have thought about it all including all of the experiences we have had, all the pain along the way, all of the loss and difficulty, all of the gain and blessing, all of the relationships we have come to establish, it helped me to remember something.  The Northwest is to me what the desert was to the Apostle Paul and Moses.  God used this place to bring me closer to Him, and that was His purpose all along.  

He has had me pray more, read more scripture, meditate on scripture more, analyze what is going on around me to see what He's doing in my life, and generally has led me closer to himself.  So many times He allowed me to go out on the streets of Everett thinking that I would be able to share my faith and bring people to the Lord, and in those times I wouldn't run into a single person!  But I prayed a lot during those times.  Jesus walked side by side with me as I prayed to encounter people, prayed for our family and for the people of Everett, and generally got to know the Lord better.  And the Lord needed to pull me from the comfortable and the familiar so He could do this work in my life.  I'm not the same person who left 5 years ago, and praise God for that!

What about you?

Do you find yourself in the middle of your life's circumstances wondering what it is all about?  Do you look back on a time in your life where God led you to a different job, church, ministry, or even another land and you wonder why He did all of that?  You might be drawn into negative and cynical thinking due to things not working out like you thought they would.  I would encourage you to look at the big picture for perspective.  Prayerfully consider the thoughts and attitudes you previously had that were changed as a result of that time.  Consider the relationships you were able to form and cultivate that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.  And especially consider how that time impacted your walk with the Lord. 

If you examine your life and realize you have distanced from the Lord as a result of the circumstances He has put you through, go back to Him!  Talk to Him about your fears, your frustrations, your cares, and ask Him for perspective on what He is doing.  He may not explain to you what everything was about, but it is likely the curtain will get pulled back enough for you to gain insight into His work in your life.  But go to Him in prayer! 

Remember, God is keenly interested in relationship with you and me.  And out of that relationship many wonderful things can come out of you, which is the way it is supposed to be.  That is why Jesus told the woman at the well that drinking from him would give her living water that would turn into a bubbling spring within her.  Springs provide a continual supply of water that does not stop, and they overflow onto a lot of the terrain around them.  That living water comes from Jesus and quenches our spiritual thirst and also can overflow onto everyone around us.  But it begins and ends in relationship to Jesus.

What might God be doing in you through this period in your life?

Circumstances: How God May Get Your Attention

For the last few posts I have been describing for you how God reached into my life to tell us to go back to Houston.  I shared the uncomfortable prayers that I began praying nearly a year ago, and in the second post I was able to describe what He initially told me to do, and in the third post I shared the fear that I encountered afterward and how He dealt with my fear.  In this post, I plan on sharing my experience with how God uses circumstances to get your attention.

I knew that week that I needed to go be alone with the Lord to pray over what He had told me to do.  I needed to leave the house, and I felt I needed to leave the city altogether.  So I made plans to go to one of my favorite places in the Northwest, and quite possibly in the whole world, which thankfully is a short drive away from Everett.  I went to Friday Harbor, Washington, a small town on San Juan Island which is in between Washington and Victoria, British Columbia.  It is a beautiful spot with pristine blue-green water, views of the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, and much wildlife including Orca whales.  And while this happens to be one of my favorite places, the plan that God had in store for me on this day was better than I could have ever imagined.  When I reach the end of my life, I believe I will look back and count this day among my top 3 that I have lived because I had a deep and personal encounter with Jesus, my shepherd.


I prayed prior to going on this day trip that the Lord would speak clearly to me that day and that His message would be unmistakable.  I know my friends in Houston were doing the same thing.  So I set out that morning playing worship music in my car and tearfully praised God for all He had done in my life.  I feel fortunate to have gone from believing worship is about me and the style of music I like to being about praising God for who He is.  This time of worship was truly a blessing to my heart and brought me closer to the Lord.

On the way north toward the ferry terminal in Anacortes, I was praying and passed by a sign that I nearly missed.  But I saw it when I was supposed to see it, and to me it was not a message about skiing.  

If you think this is strange, bear with me.  There's a larger lesson here for you and me that the Lord wants to teach us.

I pondered that sign for many miles after that, tears in my eyes.  I knew it was for me right them, but continued praying for clarity and that I would hear the Lord.  I boarded the ferry Hyak and we began the hour-long journey to Friday Harbor.  I stayed inside on the passenger deck because it was a very cold day and it was raining.  I spent that hour with my Bible opened, journaling about what I was reading.  The first passage I encountered that morning was Genesis 35:1-3 where God told Jacob to move to Bethel (which means House of God...sounds like a church) to settle there.  It also mentions that God would be with Jacob there, yet another reminder that God would be going with me.

I then flipped back to Ezekiel 11:16-20 and read what the Lord told the exiles.  He told them that He had scattered them among the nations of the world, but that He would be a sanctuary to them during that time.  And then He said that He was planning to gather them back together and give them the land of Israel once again.  Each of these things has applied to our family.

Of note also is the fact that God, in these passages, also was saying that he would renew my heart in this.  I have struggled for the last year since closing Purpose Church with a heart that was stubborn, sometimes stony, as I grappled with the Lord over what that whole painful episode was all about.  Here I saw redemption.  Here I saw renewal.  Here I saw an invitation from the Lord to go on a new journey with Him, and a promise that He would be with me.

As I processed this on the ferry, I became fearful once again because I know what cross-country moves are like.  When we moved to Washington I was naive in this area.  Not so any more.  Moves are stressful by themselves.  Moves with a large family are more stressful.  I no longer had the rose-colored glasses that I used to wear.  But the Lord had an answer for that too as I flipped to Romans 5:3-5.
 
³ We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. ⁴ And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. ⁵ And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

He did not promise me we would avoid difficulty.  He did tell me that it would be with purpose.  When you enter into difficult times, that often is what you need to know in that moment.  Please just tell me there was a purpose to all of this!  And there is.

From that point I got off of the ferry in driving rain and went to a coffee shop right in front of the ferry landing.  I bought a snack and some coffee and sat down with my Bible again.  But this time I did something a little different.  I had brought my journal from the time God moved us out of Texas with the purpose of comparing what it said to what was happening now.  After all, the manner in which God speaks into your life in one circumstance is often how He will speak to you in the next.  I wanted to look for themes and consistency.

This was the view out of the coffee shop as I read God's word and my own journal from 5 years ago.

I had not ever read through my journal from that time in my life, but am glad I did.  What I read made me burst into tears.  I'm sure I looked like a complete fool, so I sat in front of a window looking out at the ferry dock so nobody could see me.  In the journal I read about the scriptures God had led me to that were so specific about moving away from Texas.  I read about the passion He had put in my heart for the new work He was calling me to.  I read about the things He was telling me to do moment by moment, my thoughts on those things, and what He did as a result.  I read about His promises to be with me along the way.  And I also read something that finally released me from the guilt, shame, and brokenheartedness I have long experienced after closing Purpose Church.

In my mind I had gradually shifted my calling to Washington from what God gave and substituted it with my own plan of planting a church.  When the church failed and closed down, I had failed and took it personally.  Up to that very day I had not recovered.  Why did God lead me to Washington and allow this thing to close down?  Why had we rearranged our lives altogether and gone through so much pain? What was that all about?  The Lord redirected me in that sweet moment to a gentle reminder of why He had brought us, written by my own hand.  It simply said this:  "God has called us to Washington to live in the community, work in the community, build relationships with those around us, and to share about Jesus every chance we got."  Well, we did do that.  In fact, that is what we have been most successful at doing.  It was as if a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders in that moment, a weight I had put there and held onto.  It was a weight I was never intended to bear. 

As it turns out, I had misread the ferry schedule and my ferry home would not be arriving for several more hours, so I went for a two mile walk on a road leading out of the town of Friday Harbor.  I believe God had done this on purpose because He was not done reassuring me of His plan.  So I set out and the rain finally stopped.  As I walked, I prayed more and more and more for clarity.  I told God that I was concerned to have invented these things on my own and that I wasn't hearing from Him.  I told Him that I don't feel much like a good pastor and that I don't feel strong enough to do the work.  He immediately reminded me that absolute, total surrender would be necessary to do it His way, and that gave me peace.  And then I came to the fork in the road that looked like this.  It speaks for itself.

Here I stood with the Lord and stared at a place that represented my life at that moment.  I could move on with my career and keep doing it.  I could focus all of my life on building a school up and the community around it, investing all of my time and my passion and my heart and energy in this endeavor.  But that road would ultimately lead nowhere of significance.  In fact, that road is a road paved by human hands and littered with pride and self-centeredness.  Or, I could acknowledge this turning point and go down that road, which leads over a hill and around a bend, and I can't see what is coming next.  To go down this road I would need to have faith since a map does not exist.  I would have to rely on the Lord.

While this place got my attention and turned my heart, a little further down the road I made a final commitment to the Lord on a beautiful beach facing out into open water.  I stood before the Lord on that spot and told Him that if He was calling on our family to move back to Humble, we would go with no questions asked.  And in that moment, God said "okay, now head back to the ferry because you are close to being late!"

How does God get our attention?

Let me make this personal for you.  Has God ever gotten your attention?  It might have been over some sin in your life, or something He wanted you to do, or an answer to a prayer that you had prayed.  His tools for getting your attention are many.  After all, he knows how you are wired because He wired you Himself!  He knows how you think because He designed the mechanisms for doing that.  

That sign that I saw on the way to Friday Harbor was not coincidence.  I am convinced that God had placed it there in that moment for me to see.  To all of the other people driving on I-5 it was just a sign about skiing.  To me, it was a sign of change.  And how about the second sign marking Turn Point Road and Black Road, indicating a dead end?  To any other passersby, this was just a road sign.  To me, it was God getting my attention.

I know what you are probably thinking.  You mean you are rearranging your whole life because of something you read on a sign?  Nope.

The signs were just two pieces of the puzzle, but God used them to get my attention.  God used scripture and prayer over and over and over again to tell me what to do.  He led me to messages in the Bible that were consistent, specific, and meant for me to read in that moment.  And these things were all backed by significant times of prayer with Him where He answered me directly either while I was praying or just afterward.  And God also used these two road signs as a reinforcer, an affirmation, a consistent message about what we should do.  He knows how I am wired.  I am visual and pay great attention to symbolism, and that is exactly what He used to talk to me in that moment.  And it matched with everything else He had been telling me through every other venue.

Would I still choose to move back to Humble, Texas even if I did not see those signs?  Absolutely, positively yes.  What God had told me to this point was ultra clear.  He used two visual reminders on that day to remind me that He really is walking beside me through the changes.  He reminded me that wherever I happen to go, He is already there.

I would caution you on one thing about circumstances.  I have seen and heard about many well-meaning Christians who will read something like this and then start believing every sign, every word from a friend or family member or a pastor, or even pictures or paintings are God telling them what to do.  Don't do that.  Taken by themselves those things may not be from the Lord at all.  You simply must go to the Lord in prayer and in the Bible to look for consistency.  If what you happen to be reading in God's word, what you are hearing in your prayer life, and your circumstances seem to align and say the same thing, I believe you can take that as the Lord being in it.  But don't go down the road of looking only at circumstances. 

What is God telling you to do right now?  The One who made your inmost parts knows how you think, knows what you think about, and has witnessed personally every moment of your life.  This God who takes up residence inside of His followers will talk to you using a variety of methods.  He has a history of doing that in the Bible (see Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Balaam, Paul, and many others).  What is he saying to you right now?  I would encourage you today to go spend time with Him and listen.  And then...GO!

Facing Fear after God Speaks

In the last post I began telling you about how God began telling me that He wanted our family to move back to "the land of your father."  This was just the beginning of what turned out to be a pivotal week spent with the Lord where He spoke so clearly, so distinctly, and so sweetly into my life.  I will continue sharing the details of that call here so that you may recognize Him speaking directly to you about something.

Where we last left off God had very clearly told me to go back to Texas, the land of my ancestors.  I was very excited to hear from the Lord like this, but over time my initial enthusiasm began giving way to anxiety and even fear.  I woke up the next morning feeling like I needed to fast and pray that day, even though it would be a full workday.  That I did, although I was very distracted that day and am certain that our staff could tell.  It was hard to focus on anything work-related.  My anxiety was turning to fear of many things at once:  fear that I was actually hearing God, fear of the unknown, fear of abandoning everything and starting over yet again, fear of not knowing what the new ministry would be like, fear of letting our current church down, fear of letting our new church down, and fear of letting my school and the Northwest down. I had to go to the Lord again and again about that all day long.

At the end of my workday I went home and sensed that I needed to be alone with the Lord.  The weather was decent so I decided to walk through our neighborhood to one of my favorite spots that overlooks Puget Sound and the harbor.  As I walked there I prayed to the Lord about all of the anxiety and fear I was experiencing.  I told Him I was scared about many things and didn't know which way to go.  I didn't know what to do with it other than take those things to God directly, which scripture tells me is the way to go.  As I walked, the Lord suddenly brought James 1:5-8 to mind.

⁵ If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. ⁶ But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

One of my favorite places to sit and pray near our house.  This spot is a real blessing!

The Lord in His goodness told me what to do right then.  He was telling me through this passage that I needed to ask Him directly about this call to confirm it, and to bring my fears to him.  I believe in that moment He was emphasizing that I should not run to people to get their thoughts, as I tend to do.  He was telling me to come directly to Him and that if I did that, He would not rebuke me for asking and that He would tell me what to do.  But it was also clear to me that I needed to be alone with God so I could hear what He was saying.  I needed to get away from all of the people around me to hear His still, small voice in my life.  I needed to put away my phone and resist the tendency to call friends in ministry to see what they thought. 

Frankly, it is a lot easier to run to people around me to see what they think than to go to the Lord about a situation.  People are right there, sometimes in person and sometimes a phone call or text away.  And while I believe people can speak into your life a message from the Lord, they also are subject to their own motivations and motives, passions, feelings, and opinions.  And many times those things are not from the Lord and can simply create confusion as you listen to them.  Talking to many people to get their opinions only compounds the matter further, making us a "wave tossed on the sea."

I continued to ponder things in that moment by the bay.  The Lord reminded me that my journey in life has many similarities to that of Abraham.  Abraham was asked to move "to the land I will show you," and Abraham did.  He was asked to sacrifice his son on a mountaintop and made preparations to do so, only to have God stay his hand at the very last second before he carried it out.  It made me wonder if God might be asking me to move back to Texas to see if I'd do it, only to stop me at the last second.  Of all of my uncertainties that still existed in that moment, I was sure God would tell me what to do.

I went home that evening and talked with Amanda about things.  We both felt strongly that we needed to be in prayer about this for the remainder of the week.  God was clear on that.  So we made an agreement not to talk to each other about this for an entire week.  Instead, we would both listen and pray independently and would compare notes at a later date.  But the interesting thing out of this is that both Amanda and I felt strongly that the Lord wanted to tell me directly what He wanted us to do.  And we both had decided that we would do what He told us to do.

Meanwhile I was still stuck in the middle of the week with the knowledge that I needed to keep listening as I could, even while going back and forth between work and home that week.  The next day I woke up and read Romans 4 about "the faith of Abraham."  I cringed a bit because I remembered the previous evening where the Lord reminded me of the parallels between his life and my own.  Then I flipped back to Genesis 32 and read this:

⁹ Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my grandfather Abraham, and God of my father, Isaac—O Lord, you told me, ‘Return to your own land and to your relatives.’ And you promised me, ‘I will treat you kindly.’ ¹⁰ I am not worthy of all the unfailing love and faithfulness you have shown to me, your servant. When I left home and crossed the Jordan River, I owned nothing except a walking stick. Now my household fills two large camps!

This described us.  We moved to the Pacific Northwest thinking we were going to be giving up nearly everything, and instead God blessed our family richly during our entire time in this place.  This simple reminder in that moment was a reminder that God has been with us the entire time we have lived away from our homeland.  He has never left us alone here, and this provided me more reassurance that what He was calling me to do would be the same.  He would not leave us.  In fact, He would go with us!

How to hear God in circumstances like this

You may be wondering about the actual mechanism that helped me to hear God's voice in this moment.  I'm sharing our story because I believe you will see these same patterns in your own life.  But the Bible also gives us some insight on listening to the Lord.

A theme in the Bible and a theme of this story is that God tells people what to do, the person responds by thinking about it, praying, and taking action.  Then the person becomes fearful of what happens next because God almost always only revealed the next steps and not the entire picture.  Then, the person would pray about those fears and as they are brought to the Lord He deals with them one by one, sometimes simply bringing peace, other times providing a way out.  At times the way out made sense and at other times it did not.  Judges 6 chronicles the story of Gideon, and his life follows this pattern.  Gideon is threshing wheat in a wine press to hide out from his enemies, a cowardly act.  An angel appears and tells him that Israel will be rescued through Gideon.  Gideon asks for several signs to confirm that this will happen, and the Lord responds with some amazing circumstances to confirm what He has said.  Gideon then obeys the Lord, but falls into a pattern of fear and questioning each step of the way.  The Lord always answered at that time and told him what to do next. 

What should you do when you face similar circumstances?  If you are following Jesus I do believe He will intercept you at particular points in your life and ask you to do something different, something crazy, something that others may see and scoff at.  So how do you listen for His voice in those moments?  How do you recognize it?

• Daily reading of Scripture- Open the Bible each day prayerfully asking God to speak directly to you.  What you read in that moment is what He is saying to you!  This does not involve randomly opening some place in Scripture and reading that.  Instead, find some Bible reading plan that works for you.  Perhaps it is one chapter in the Old Testament and one chapter in the New Testament each day.  Perhaps it is reading in 3 or 4 places each day, or maybe just one.  There is no magic formula;  just read!  If you really want a plan on paper that you can follow, here are some ones you could try.  The point isn't necessarily that you look in particular places in the Bible.  Instead the point is that you should be regularly reading it and applying what it says to your life!  
• Prayerful reading of scripture- Once you read, pray on what you read, asking the Lord to reveal to you what He is saying in that moment to you.  If you haven't done so, consider starting a journal about your thoughts on your daily reading.  For me this has helped me to process what I think God is saying.  Journaling helps you to slow down a bit and listen more.
• Prayers while alone with God, followed by silence- This is crucial step for you and me.  It is unfortunate that prayer in church often models that we should talk endlessly at God in great and flowery detail by using "churchy" sounding words.  I have come to understand that prayer should involve me talking to God followed by moments of silence, listening to God.  It has been my experience that in those moments of silence, a thought will pop into my head, seemingly from nowhere.  Often these are scriptures I have read, which I will then open to and meditate on.  This is God speaking to you!  But you will never hear it if you talk at him endlessly.

Spend time today examining your prayer life, remembering that prayer is our time of communicating directly with God.  Prayers need no intermediary, have no filter, and impose no wall between you and the Lord.  This is about you and God only. 

If you find that your prayers have fallen into a pattern of talking at God rather than with God, go be alone with him today for a time.  If you need to, leave your phone somewhere else so you won't be distracted.  Leave your house so you can be away from people.  Go for a walk, or just go sit in a nice spot away from others.  Pray to Him, telling him what is on your mind, asking for guidance on whatever situation is bothering you now.  Then, when you feel the time is right, stop talking.  It is okay to look around if you need to, although you may find that to be distracting.  If it is, keep your eyes closed and wait, simply asking the Lord to speak and focusing yourself on Him.  Pay attention to a thought that pops up from something you have read in the Bible and see what He might say in those moments.  You may be surprised!  Remember too that God will not tell you to do something that contradicts something in the Bible.

I am praying for you as you walk with Jesus, that your walk would be closer, sweeter, more real, and more vibrant than anything you have ever experienced to date.  Remember, the Lord considers you to be very special and desires this kind of relationship with you, no matter who you are.