Year in Review

So it is a year now since we arrived at Tierra Nueva (New Earth) and its been rich. It is like we were a potted plant that has been transplanted into a bigger space, so our roots are spreading out, we are absorbing new nutrients and new and more fruit is coming.

• May 1, 2008 - Bob, what are we doing here? We spent several months trying on different roles and by the end of the summer we felt that it was too much for Susan to try to do ministry at Tierra Nueva, have a counseling practice in Seattle and live in Bellingham. It was a hard process of discerning that continued into the Fall. May 1, 2009, Susan got office space above Tony's coffee in Bellingham to start her counseling practice 6 blocks from home!
• Receiving extraordinary teaching - we have had international visitors from France (teaching on deliverance ministry - Gilles Boucomont), South Africa (teaching on dialogical reading of the Bible - Gerald West) and Abbotsford, Canada (on hearing God's voice - Brad Jersak). We have hosted classes for Regent College from Vancouver, Canada on Reading the Bible with the Damned (reading with the poor for mutual liberation) and Lift Up Your Voice: Combining the Charismatic Prophetic with the Social Prophetic. In these classes we have both learned and been able to have amazing ministry sessions praying for people. We have also been able to receive regularly from the great minds and hearts of our staff in Bob Ekblad, Chris Hoke, Amy Muia, Nick Bryant. We had our summer course on Going Deeper in Word, Spirit and Street where all that teaching and ministry got to be combined for a full week in July.
• One of the core values in practice here is that of forgiving enemies and blessing them. I am learning this from ex-convicts who have discovered that when they do this they are set free from bitterness and anger. It is remarkable to me that I haven't heard this teaching in the church. I know that we have done this sort of thing in healing prayer, but to find it here and a regular practice (a spiritual discipline) that gangsters and felons move into so readily is humbling.
• I have wrestled regularly with my theology finding myself in a place that has challenged what I have simply swallowed, often uncritically. This has been a dismantling and stretching that has created crisis and a new expansiveness in my encounters with God. I have seen that when I said that Christianity is about relationship with Jesus, my deeper assumptions have been exposed - that being a "good Christian" is about right behavior and right belief. With the people we work with on the margins and the challenge to my theology both of those stones in my foundation have been knocked loose as I have recognized that the Pharisees were about those things.
• We have seen more of the power of God to do more than we can ask or imagine as we see people healed physically and spiritually, we see miraculous provision come in, we see demons obey at the name of Jesus and we experience the beautiful presence of God in worship more and more. And still we are praying for more - for breakthrough in healing, for debt being cancelled, for people to be delivered completely of their addictions. All that we have seen has increased our faith that there is even more.
• I have been experiencing more of the presence of Jesus daily as I am hearing His voice more and inviting others into that place. This has taken the idea of a relationship with God to a whole new dynamic level of interaction - being led by the Spirit, hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd.

Everywhere I turn, the invitation from God is to ask, seek, and knock and to keep doing it. This year has felt like a graduate program where all the studies are worked out daily in lab. It has been the most amazing year!

Setting Captives Free

Last week I had the opportunity to team up with two others from our ministry to pray for a woman for inner healing. As we were praying, one of my team members was asking the woman about some family patterns with her dad. As I listened, I asked Jesus what was going on here. I imagined a dam with a lot of water behind it and only a little coming down the trough. I thought, "That's predictable." I was feeling skeptical of my hearing from Jesus. I asked Him, "Jesus, what is the dam?" I thought I heard, "It's a lie that she has been told." I thought, "That's predictable, too." I thought that because often in prayer we have found that there are things God wants to release to a person but they can't receive it because they have come to believe something that keeps them back for one reason or another.

Still I asked Him, "What's the lie?" I won't say what it was (for confidentiality) but the next thing I heard sounded so much like my own thoughts that I immediately dismissed it. Then I realized that it was so unlike anything I would have thought of that I asked what I should do with it. He said, "Tell her," but I was afraid to, in case I was wrong. So I asked all sorts of questions around it that might give me some idea if what I was hearing was right. Her answers didn't help me sort it. Finally they all looked at me and asked me where I was going with all that and what I heard. Even at this point I hesitated and finally said, "Okay, this is what I think I saw and think I heard," and she looked at me with eyes wide and said, "That is exactly right!" This led us down a line of praying that brought increasing freedom for her.

Jesus is so beautiful to give a prophetic word (1 Corinthians 14:25) in order to set a captive free. It is such an honor and great encouragement to my faith to get to be part of things like that! Praise Him!