Is Forgiveness Enough?

He sat on the floor of our bathroom, his head in his hands. He lamented the choices he had been making, wishing he could take them all back; wishing he could go back to weeks ago when we ran into each other on the trail near my house. He would have made a different choice if he could go back.

His confession was combined with drug-induced paranoia. I'd seen him a few weeks earlier, bought him lunch and given him a lift. At that point I told him he could go to detox and stay in the nightmare of his addiction and life on the streets. It is a much longer story, but he told me he wasn't ready for detox.

Perhaps, now.

He looked up and asked me, "Do you think forgiveness is enough?"

I surpised myself by answering rather quickly, "No. It's not enough."

He looked at me with questions, and I said, "You ALWAYS have forgiveness. The love of the Father is ALWAYS pursuing you; always! He never gives up. He is always for you. Just ask and it is yours. But you need more than to be forgiven. I need more than forgiveness. I need empowerment to live in a new way. YOU need empowerment to live in a new way."

Jesus didn't live, die and rise again just so we can be forgiven. Forgiveness gets us back from negative accounting to zero. Jesus wants to move us into the black, into positive numbers, into life abundant, into a place where we are exercising authority over the things that have mastered us. He came to bring us into our authority as daughters and sons of our Father in heaven, where we are exercising His Kingdom authority on earth as it is in heaven.

The Presence Provokes

As I was leading worship last Sunday, the presence of God was very powerful. What I mean by that is that I found myself in tears at times, while at other times the air seemed heavy and charged with energy so that I bowed under it. God is always with us, but sometimes He appears or makes His Present-ness manifest. This was one of those times.

As we moved from worship into teaching (its all worship; you know what I mean), Bob taught on the gifts of healing and the ministry of Jesus - that He never prayed, "Father, if it is Your will," or "Father, please heal them." He never prayed for healing, He always declared it.

At the end of the time, Bob invited one of our friends up, who is battling cancer. He invited us to stretch out our hands and declare healing for her. People began to do this, hesitantly, when Jack (not his name) stood up and began to shout, "Get out of her! You don't belong here! You have no right to be here!" and so on, proclaiming against the cancer in the name of Jesus. This went on for some time. Jack, I think, became self conscious and took on a bit of a theatrical tone to his voice. It was, perhaps, like Peter getting out of the boat to be with Jesus and then looked around and thought, "What am I doing here?!"

At the same time that Jack was proclaiming, our friend Janice (not her name) had her hand stretched out and began to shake. We've seen this with Janice before when she prays, but this time it gained volume and momentum until she was screaming and shaking violently. Eventually this subsided and another friend came and sat next to her and held her.

We've spent much of this week processing and debriefing all this. Janice had described her experience as starting with being angry about the cancer (as was Jack) and being moved by Jack's response. Then she felt the fire of God on her and in her, and it increased. Inwardly she felt at peace, though she knew she was screaming. Today I asked her if, while all that was going on, if she felt anything leave her. She told me, "Yes. Four dark things left me."

This was standard fare for the ministry of Jesus. He would come into religious gatherings and demons were provoked by His presence - they would shout at Him and He would cast them out. That is what happened for us Sunday. His presence provoked the darkness, exposing it, and casting it out. We didn't even pray for it. He just did it.

It makes me excited to go to church. I love His Presence.

A new kind of intercession

One of our pastor friends was sharing her frustration with law enforcement in her area - how they treat her, how they treat the people she advocates for. As she shared the pain in her heart, we began to pray.

Normally, we are advocating for the defendant, the criminal, the convict and ex-offender, the undocumented one - this is our calling, to stand with those who are harassed and helpless, who are oppressed by their own choices, by others, and oppressed by a system that is not for them. The good news is that God is for them. So we are often praying for them, for their cases and situations. When we pray, we bless those who oppose, we forgive those who have wronged.

This morning, we found ourselves not praying for our usual people but for those on the other side of the system. We repented of our judgments against them. We prayed for prosecuting attorneys whose very job is to agree with the accuser against another - we prayed that they would be set free from accusation. We prayed for particular attorneys and confessed that Jesus is the Friend of sinners and tax collectors (those in the system) and these were the tax collectors. We blessed them into Jesus' presence. We confessed that we had set ourselves against them on behalf of others, so instead advocated for them before our Father. We prayed for healing and refreshing, for true wisdom and discernment; to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

It seemed like a breakthrough time.

Baptism Painting

This painting is on the wall of the landing on the way to the second floor of our building. It was painted by our friend, Troy Terpstra, finished in the summer of 2008. It stands 15 feet high and sitting on the stairs to take it in is a real joy. Sometimes we do a bible study just by talking through what we see in the painting. What do you see?

Troy's journey with this work began with work in the Skagit County Jail and gangs as he saw artwork coming out of the jail from Latino gangsters; one which depicted a Hispanic gangster Jesus on the cross. It got the creative wheels turning. The entire project took a year and a half and went through many forms before the final one.

Our primary places of ministry at Tierra Nueva are the jail and the migrant farmworker community. Our work in advocacy is standing along side those who are oppressed - by the choices of others and the systems, or by their own choices and how once you are on the wrong side of the system it is next to impossible to get out from under it.

One of the main themes we work with at Tierra Nueva is baptism - that in baptism, everything must die, everything must come under the water, all our allegiances other than our allegiance to God. We are to have no other gods before Him, to bow to no idols (the first two commandments) but we don't recognize our gods or idols (our allegiances) that need to come under the water. We need to be 'baptized' every day. What are the allegiances you see in the painting that are coming under the water?

When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, what was the baptism for? We talk about His dying to all forms of identity apart from the one the Father speaks over Him - You are My Beloved Son; I AM delighted in You. Perhaps He died to national identity as an Israelite; to family identity as the son of Mary and Joseph; to His occupational identity as a carpenter. When Jesus goes out into the wilderness, it is His identity as the Beloved Son of the Father that is challenged each time by the devil. Later, in the gospel of John 14:30, Jesus will say, "The ruler of this world is coming, but he has nothing in Me."

In dying to worldly forms of identity, Jesus is able to stand in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and was going back to God... Jesus was able to be the Advocate. When we are caught up in worldly forms of identity we feel we must advocate for ourselves against those who threaten our identity, but when we receive our identity as beloved daughters and sons of our heavenly Father who is delighted in us (before we do anything! Jesus hadn't done anything but be baptised), we are freed to be filled with the powerful Spirit of God (who is another Advocate) to partner with God on behalf of the poor, the broken, the widow and the orphan.

Ask the Holy Spirit to search you and know you and reveal to you allegiances and ways of creating identity for yourselves that need to come under the water of baptism again today.

Let a little child lead us

We want to stir up the expectation that when we gather we will encounter Jesus, the risen One, who is always with us and never leaves us. As we experience His presence, hearing His voice, watching the Holy Spirit work, we see that He will lead us out into the world to be a place where other people encounter Jesus through us.

As we have continued to meet with the kids in our Friday group, we have been reading Brad Jersak's Children, Can You Hear Me? inviting kids to picture Jesus in a favorite place. How does He greet you? What does He look like? What is the expression on His face? What does He say to you?

Later in the week, one of our community was meeting with a distressed friend. As their conversation progressed, they invited this friend to meet with Jesus and heard Jesus say words that touched them so deeply that they felt something dark leave them.

Just bringing people into the light of Jesus' presence... beautiful.

Becoming Like Children

Last night we met for our fourth time as a fledgling community in Bellingham. At one point after dinner we gathered together, eight adults and four kids. We asked the kids what they thought Jesus meant when He said we needed to become like little children in order to see the Kingdom.

Tamera, who is eight, said that adults forget what they knew when they were kids and don't have good imaginations.

We read some out of Brad Jersak's Children, Can You Hear Me?, a children's book on hearing and seeing Jesus with the eyes and ears of your heart. Kaedon, seven, said you have to be a kid on a swing to see God in the clouds. When asked how we were to do that, Tamera said we needed bigger swings.

We asked the kids to go around and pray for each of the adults that we could become more like children. It was really beautiful. Jesus was there.

Interview with the author of The Shack

I was recently interviewed "man on the street" style about The Shack for Cornwall Church in Bellingham where William Paul Young was going to speak. Below is the link to his interview. He speaks of his life growing up as a missionary kid who was physically and sexually abused and how that impacted him - it is a deeply moving story that informs his writing of a book to tell his children what he believes after 11 years of therapy.

www.vimeo.com/10847190