Wedding by God

We weren't sure it was going to happen - Nicholas and Holly, both recovering meth users, having been together for years, wanted to get married. We talked about it and even set a tentative date of July 3, but then I didn't hear from them until the end of June. So the day before the wedding date, we hang out in the garden and make our plans.

Friday morning I sat in the garden and read Psalm 23, which they had picked for their wedding. I asked Jesus what the Father's heart was for them and began to write. I've done this in different situations but never before for a wedding. I felt Jesus told me things He wanted to bless them with, things they needed to ask for and things He wanted to break off of them.

As we neared the ceremony, I mentioned to Chris (playing piano) that after the vows and rings we would have a time for everyone who wanted to come up and lay hands on them to pray. Chris suggested that he play some music and we invite people to sit and ask Jesus what He wants them to give to Holly and Nicholas, and then we would all pray. So, when the time came I invited people to do this but what happened was better than our plan. Throughout the music, couples and individuals came forward when they were ready to speak blessing over Nicholas and Holly and to pray with them. This went on for 15 minutes and was so beautiful to see. It was intimate, personal and powerful.

Soul Making

Thoughts from Alan Jones that have made me hungry and introspective:

Conversion is about soul making. It is not material for the ten o'clock news. It takes a long time to make a human being and conversion is that continual process of being made and re-made (and being un-made at times, I would add. some things in us need to come down before we are built anew).

Our conversion of saying Yes to God is a real thing, but it is unfinished and incomplete... no one has an experience of Jesus without it being filtered through another person... we also encounter Jesus in a particular form or tradition, through a historically conditioned community. Sometimes that tradition is mediated through a form of worship or a body of writings. Then we have our own unique and idiosyncratic way - our neuroses push us into a particular style of believing... and all my prejudices are undermined when I meet and like people from different traditions I had rejected as bigotted or false.

So, I've been thinking about conversion as another way of talking about baptism or dying to self. We must be converted again and again. So much of what we encounter in the church appears to be simply what is outside the church with a thin veneer of Jesus. We have forgiveness and eternal life, but apart from that much is business as usual. What does it mean for me to be converted again in how I see Jesus, how I see myself, in how I view money and power and sex, in how I really love my neighbor, in how I work, in how I love the poor?

Some people are converted by reading an article or watching a movie. These are people of deep compassion and passion. I am not one of these people. For me, maybe especially as a teacher, to be converted to the scandal of the gospel (when is the last time Jesus offended you?), I have to be uprooted from my safe, distant, I've got it figured out because it works for me context and be put among people for whom my theology and beliefs don't work so easily. Then I must wrestle in order to be blessed. I must be converted again. That only happens for me where what I am regularly encountering doesn't fit with my nice, neat categories. And its not enough to be in it by myself; the load of understanding, trying to make sense of it is too much for me. Or of trying to do anything about it; the overwhelming nature of it would paralyze me. It takes a community, flawed in its own blind spots, but present in the questions and witnesses to the saving work of Jesus as we wrestle together.

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!

One of the ways Jesus is scandalizing me

As I've been praying with people lately and inviting Jesus to show up, He has been offending me at times...

Praying with one man, I asked Jesus where He was in the room and I saw Him kneeling at the feet, "submitting" Himself to this man. I thought, "No, thats not right. We submit to You, Jesus." Then the thought came to me, "The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve."

Even as I write that I still feel the resistance in me. We are to serve Him - right? Not my will, but His - right?

Praying with another man, I again saw Jesus kneeling before him and told Him, "No." He said He wanted to wash his feet. I still resisted what I was hearing/thinking and He said, "Unless I wash you, you have no part of Me."

The other night in worship we recognized that the resurrected Jesus was among us to visit us even as He visited the disciples in the upper room. So we asked Jesus to show us how He wanted to visit us. After sitting to see what He would say to us, several people said they saw Him dancing and worshipping over us, celebrating us, telling us how glad He was that we had come. We were there to worship Him and He was there to receive our worship but also to bless and lavish His love and affection on us.

I am continually amazed at how Jesus breaks the box of my understanding which is way too small for the risen Jesus.

Asking Jesus

A friend called me the other day about a decision he was trying to make. He had talked with his small group about it and was getting conflicting advice. He called me and presented all the options he was considering and the pros and cons, and asked me what I thought. I said, "This may be an obvious question and you've probably already done this, but have you asked Jesus?"

He said, "No, I asked my small group and I'm asking you."

"I think it is better to start by asking Jesus and if you have questions about what you are hearing, then ask your small group for confirmation. But we need to start with Jesus."

He said he hadn't done that and agreed that we should. His question was around some money stuff, so I prayed, "Jesus, You've heard our conversation and You know all our baggage around money - guilt, stewardship questions, self-justifications. Would You please move that aside and tell us what You want us to do with this question?" Immediately my friend said, "I heard Him say..."

It was a beautiful moment that I realize doesn't happen often. Our thought is always to ask others before we ask Jesus. Why is that? I think it is because:

• we don't believe Jesus speaks to us in real time, only in the bible. But the bible says (John 10) "My sheep hear My voice" - not "My pastors, My teachers, My super-spiritual friends." My sheep -thats all of us.
• we are afraid we already know what Jesus will say to us and we want to do what we want. This is largely the case. If you boil down Christian faith to two words, they are trust Jesus. Mostly I think that we still live out of the first lie in the Garden which is, "God is holding out on you, He is not for you but against you, so you need to grasp for and hold on to whatever you are going to get." The good news is that God is for you and not against you - He is a good Father who gives us good gifts. We need to replace the lie with the truth. That is not to say that if we ask for something He won't have an answer different than the one we are looking for. He is not a rubber stamp, He is God. That is where the trust Jesus part comes in, when He is saying something that requires faith on our parts, whether to step out or to wait.
• we don't trust ourselves to hear clearly. Good. We are to test every spirit. The minute we realize that Jesus does speak to us, we soon discover that His is not the only voice out there. This requires us to discern (throw out the bad, hold on to the good) and to submit what we are hearing to others that we trust and ask them to ask Jesus and hear what they are hearing. But we can have fun, too. As we step out with what we are hearing, we will find that Jesus is calling us co-workers and friends.

The most helpful book I've read on this is Brad Jersak's Can You Hear Me? Tuning In To The God Who Speaks. This book has done more to transform my daily interaction with Jesus from basic Christian obedience to a dynamic interaction.

Jesus and gangsters

The other day a couple Latino gangsters came by to hang out - Juan and Jesse (not their names). My co-worker, Chris, walked in on Jesse chilling in our Family Support Center. Jesse said he always feels at peace there, but whenever he thinks of coming by he always gets distracted by something coming up or by dark thoughts and ends up not coming. So Chris starts praying for him, just blessing the good stuff he is feeling there and has an image of a banqueting table covered with glorious food and the invitation from God for Jesse to eat, eat.

Jesse pictures this but quickly the plate in front of him is pushed away and replaced with a plate with a five-pointed star in the center - this is a satanic symbol. Chris invites me to join in praying and the more Chris prays, the more Jesse gets distracted and agitated. He talks about thoughts of murder and feels like he wants to jump up and hit people and run out of the room.

I tell him, "We can pray for you and you might feel some measure of relief from that, but you need to pray and ask Jesus to come in to you and to help you." So he does and things get worse for him. I have this thought about a "deliverance" type prayer that leads you in claiming Jesus as Lord, to confess and repent of your sins, to receive washing through the blood of Jesus and to break off all demonic assignments.

I bring it into the room and hand it to Chris. He reads it quietly and agrees that we should lead Jesse through it. He reads it out loud so Jesse would know what he was agreeing to. At that moment, Juan says, "Hey man, I gotta bounce (go). I'm late to see my girl." (Juan has left his girl hanging for hours in the past...) Jesse says the same, that he has somewhere he suddenly has to go. He says he could come back another day and we can spend the whole day praying. We ask him if he'd be willing to take five minutes and he relunctantly agrees with Juan scowling at us. Jesse repeats after Chris with a few breaks to explain terminology. At the end they are ready to go. Chris asks Jesse if he feels any different and he says, No. Then Chris asks him if he is still having evil thoughts in his mind and he says, "Hey, I haven't thought of those in a little while."

There is still more work to do with these guys, but it was beautiful to see Jesus moving to bring His shalom into gangsters.