When Life Gets Full

I've been thinking about rest lately and how I often seek it by getting away from my everyday life - taking days off from work, going golfing, getting away to a cabin/hotel for a night and occasionally a trip to a tropical destination. So many times that I have done this my body and mind experience a reprieve from the constant stresses of life - and it is good! But as with most of us, when I return to my regular life I am quickly consumed by old situations and the rest that I have accumulated is quickly spent.

A few weeks ago things began to shift for me. I was coming out of an extended period of 'rest'. I had taken 2 months off from itinerant ministry to be at home with my wife and 3 kids. (Our twins had just turned 7 months old and we were all exhausted!) I had begun to catch up on much needed sleep and my mind was beginning to function normally again. Deep down I began to reconnect with a longing I had for places of intimate worship and community. Places that I had not been to in a few years due to the craziness of our lives (kids, moving, new jobs etc). But as I unplugged from the chaos of my life this hunger for God's presence began to re-emerge. What happened next was truly a blessing.

My wife Rhonda and I received a CD containing a message entitled "Encountering the Affections of God". We popped it into our player and got nailed right in the center of our souls! It was exactly what we had been craving for months!! God had provided us with a precious gift, the gift of His spirit alive in us again! Over the course of the next 3 weeks I began listening to this CD over and over. Every chance I got I was reconnecting with God and it was beginning to stir things in me that I hadn't felt in a number of years.

During that time I regained my hunger for God's word, for worship and for prayer. I would be drawn to worship CD's that I would play over and over again while I watched my kids play. I couldn't, and still can not get enough of God's presence!

Then I had a very interesting experience yesterday. Our church staff went on a two day retreat to focus and plan our upcoming teaching series. Normally I look forward to unplugging from my life and getting some peace and quiet, but this time was different. I had no desire to unplug! I wanted to stay plugged in to my life. Sure I enjoyed spending an hour at a local spa, going for dinner and playing some Settlers of Catan, but something was missing. Unplugging didn't bring with it the same feelings of relief that I once longed for. And then I realized something that I hope will stay with me for the rest of my life. I didn't want to unplug from my life because my everyday ordinary life was filling me with an abundance of Life!

I didn't need to get away to reconnect with God, or get physical or mental rest. I was experiencing a daily renewal of my mind, body and spirit by staying in God's presence on a daily basis...and here's the kicker...in the midst of my real life!

It reminded me of something the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans many years ago...

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him." Romans 12: 1-2 (MSG)

And so I began to put a few God truths together for myself

1) My life is a gift from God and everything I have comes from Him (James)
2) God has a plan for me and it is a great one! (Jeremiah)
3) God's desire is that I encounter the fullness of His love for me (Ephesians)
4) Embracing what God does for me is the best thing I can do for Him (Romans)

So....if God gave me my seemingly chaotic life, with the wife, job and three kids....AND He desires for me to encounter the fullness of His love....AND He asks me to give him my everyday life...then I must conclude that I don't need to get away from my life to encounter fulfillment, I need to encounter God in the midst of it!

I can't live my life disconnected from reality, the reality that God created and designed for me. I have to live the life He gave me. After all, if He has designed it for me and longs for me to encounter the fullness of His love through my life, then I must conclude that I can and will experience Him right in the middle of my wife, job and three kids on a daily basis! And guess what? I have!!!!!

If we keep trying to get away from our God given lives in order to find Him, I think we are missing the point. He wants us to encounter him IN it and THROUGH it! We must learn to plug IN to what God has for us today and stop trying to get away from it. If I run away from my life, the life God gifted to me (a good and perfect gift) then I will never enter into abundant living. I will have settled for a weekend getaway with Jesus when he has asked me to come and make my home in him. To live with him. Living with him daily!

I have begun to experience a deeper joy for my family, for my surroundings, the relationships God has given me and most of all a greater hunger for God. It is the truth of abiding in Him. That all things truly flow out from His presence. And I believe that if the church got a hold of this reality we would stop trying to check out of our lives and start living through them.

So the next time you feel like checking out, I invite you to plug in to the day that God has gifted you with. I think you'll love what you find!

A Tongue Twister of Faith

Hanging around with people who follow Jesus presents me with many opportunities to talk about the mysteries of God. Those things about God that we just don't understand (or should I say 'totally' don't understand?) but we desperately try to wrap our brains around them. Things like - why did he make the duck-billed platapus? Why are men and woman so different? And the more mystical questions about prophecy and tongues. It's not often we come up with new or different perspective on these age old questions but yesterday I had a new thought (at least new to me). What if tongues was meant to be a practical gift? Let me explain.

We have a new refugee family that just moved into our community. Unlucky for them they arrived in the middle of a cold spell in central Canada. As we were discussing their arrival one person commented that they don't speak a word of English. My mind suddenly made a quantum leap, I was pulled out of southern Manitoba and reminded of a very familiar passage of scripture - the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentacost (Acts 2).


"When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit enabled them.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" Acts 2:1-11

I was also reminded of something I have heard many times "Remember the foreigner". Over forty times in the Old Testament we are commanded to care for the foreigner in our land!

"The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love his as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God." Lev 19:34

"He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves
the alien, giving him food and clothing." Deut 10:18

As these two passages were brought together in my mind I couldn't help but wonder how amazing it would be to walk into this refugee families home and share the good news of Jesus with them in their mother tongue! Wasn't that in fact what happened for the disciples? They were able to preach to good news to all present in their own language - and the people were not only amazed, they were converted! It wasn't about some cosmic freak show at Pentacost, it was a loving God displaying just how much he cared about each person present. He cared enough to speak to them in their own language! To me that is amazing!! To think that God had such personal interest in each person there. He knew them, the language that they spoke and provided a way for them to encouter the truth of who he is.

So I began thinking about the gift of tongues and it's role in our lives today.

Now you must know that I grew up in a very conservative community/church and the gift of tongues was tabboo to say the least. Nobody had the gift, and even fewer people wanted to talk about it. But as I ventured out of that bubble I encountered many mysteries of God that began to reshape my thinking as well as my God experience. Tongues was one of those encounters. But no matter were I have gone the gift of tongues is a big mystery to people - even the people who speak in tongues. We often think of it as being very impractical (and most would say requires interpretation in order to be of any use). But here was my new perspective....

What if God wanted to share the gospel of Jesus with our new refugees? He knows they are here, and he knows that they don't speak English (and we all do). Do I believe that God is waiting for them to learn English before he will reveal himself to them? Or is it possible that He wants to display His glory through one of his spirit filled followers? What if my tongue is the very language that these refugees speak? That would be amazing. That would be the kind of thing that my God of love would do! Maybe I need to pray about that! Maybe someone else is being asked to ask for the gift of tongues for that very reason but is unsure as to its purpose!?

And what about our missionaries who spend years learning the language of the culture they are about to serve in. What if God wanted to share the gospel with them today? What about the tribes of South America who nobody has found yet? Does anyone speak their language? God does! I could spend 10 years trying to figure out this tribes dialect before I could communicate with them the gospel. With the gift of tongues, God's spirit could do that TODAY! So I had to ask myself another question. Do I have more faith that I could discern and learn a tribes language over the course of a decade, or do I have more faith that God could gift me with their tongue through the power of his spirit? After all, he created them. He knows them. He gave them their language.

So now I am contemplating the idea that my time could be better spent praying for the gift of tongues then relying on my own wisdom or ability to learn. And besides, which one will give God more glory? My hard work or his divine provision?

The result has been that I am rethinking the gift of tongues and starting to conclude that it may be one of the most practical gifts of them all. I'll keep you posted.

You Can Quote Me On This

A bridge over dry ground is Christ's cross to the proud,
But confession brings a mighty river.


Today is a gift, not the accumulation of coincidence.

Tell Better Stories

I love this commercial I saw a while back. An SUV full of people is travelling to all kinds of out of the way places and discovering wonderful new things. In the end they show the company logo and the tag line..."Tell better stories".

How many of us have a friend or relative that is a great story teller? The kind of person that you could listen to for hours as they recount tales of discovery and misadventure. We are captivated by them, and all the while we think to ourselves "This is unbelievable! Who has these kinds of experiences? I've never done anything like that." But great stories fuel our imagination and create a hunger inside of us. A hunger to discover more, to take the next ride, to experience the next height. It's why we buy so many books, rent so many movies and the Biography channel is in extistence. We love great stories. But more importantly I believe we all long to experience the extra-ordinary! For most of us our lives our somewhat boring and uneventful, and so we live vicariously through fantasy or the fantastical, and stories provide that for us.

So why don't we have great stories? Is it because we've lived our lives in fear and therefore do nothing worth talking about? Is it because we are never presented with the opportunity to be involved in the sublime? Or are we afraid that our stories won't measure up to those around us, or even worse, the ones we see on TV?

I believe we all have great stories. We all have moments when things impact us, tranform our way of thinking and cause permanent changes in the way we view the world. I believe the thing we lack is not the content to tell compelling stories, but rather the courage to share ourselves with the world around us.

Instead of sharing our lives, our stories, our experiences - we reduce our existence to theories and intellectual ideas. But here lies the problem. Ideas have never changed the world! Theories only point us to what might be, they speak of the possible. But until we take an idea to task, and enter into it's experience, it is simply something with great potential and nothing more. On the other hand, stories (at least true ones) provide us with proof of the possible, that something is more than an idea. It is real. How do we know that? Because we know somebody who has experienced it first hand. And so stories build in us the faith to believe in greater things - greater things that capture our minds, hearts and imaginations. So instead of trying to sell an idea, we have engaged peoples souls! That is the power of story.

A few days ago I experienced the power of story first hand. I had two friends who were preparing to teach about the promises of God.

One friend was preparing to teach on the promise that Jesus loves us! That we can stake our life on his unfailling love for us. The teach was full of truth, but it just seemed like good ideas or wishful thinking. So I asked my friend why she felt she could depend on Jesus? Give me some evidence that he is trustworthy! Outside of pulling scripture together to back up your belief, what can you share with me that will compell me to embrace this truth? Or do you simply have an idea, a theory (or perhaps theology)? We had a lengthy converstion, and I have to admit I was not very compelled by what I was hearing.

Contrast that with another friend who was doing a chapel for high school students that same day. He was also faced with the task of engaging his audience, and he was somewhat afraid that he might not captivate them. After all, he is just beginning to serve as a preacher/teacher and is short on experience. How could he expound the scriptures to these young minds? Was he equipped? Would he be engaging? How could he share this profound truth that when we confess our sins that God is faithful to heal us?

His response to those questions was this - he chose to communicate the most compelling part of his knowledge - his story! It is a story that tells of a remarkable journey of healing. Healing from emotional wounds, physical problems and spiritual bondage. But most importantly, it gave evidence to the truth that when we confess our sins and pray for one another, we will experience healing. The audience was captivated by his sharing, so much so that at the end he told them another story of how he experienced healing. In the end he had captured his audience and I would hazard a guess that he sparked some faith within their hearts. They hadn't heard empty religious rhetoric, they had encountered the evidence of faith.

Now before you think that one friend failed and one triumphed I must tell you this...after some encouragement, my first friend started to tell her story. At first it was difficult for her, but soon the outer shell cracked and everyone present began to understand why she felt so strongly about this truth. In sharing her story I became captivated by it. It drew me in and I now have a longing to hear more of her story, more about her experience. I want to hear the evidence of her faith! How Jesus has become real for her.

Stories captivate us by giving us the evidence our hearts crave.

In a court of law, the council is given the task of proving their case. Most of the time lawyers present theories, ideas and possibilities - hoping to convince the judge and jury of their position. But most often, the thing that proves to be of most value is the testimony of witnesses. It is their words, their experience, that compells us to believe them. After all, they have first hand knowledge of the situation. I believe the world is looking for this kind of evidence. Evidence of a real God who cares about our lives. Evidence of new life. Evidence of transformation. It is not evidence that we can manufacture, it is received when we step out in faith. It is invaluable, but only if we have the courage to tell our story. If we don't take the stand and testify, our evidence is worthless and justice will not be served.

But a word of caution, there are many people who would prefer to tell the stories of others. (Much like J. Peterman from Seinfeld who ran out of good stories so he bought better ones from Kramer.) But they are of little value compared to your own stories. Because your stories are deeply rooted in your soul, they burn with emotion and sincerity. Your story will change the world.

So here's to captivating the world by our stories and providing evidence of God's unfailing love for us. I know that through it you can change the world - Jesus did!