It All Began In A Barn

It all began in a barn. 

And the Midwest is full of them. My Dad’s first job was in a barn. The revival that lit a fire of the Gospel for many through his ministry started in a barn. The birth of the Country Church in Ruthton, Minnesota through Pastor Rich DeReuyter happened in a barn. The first snow of Winter always seems to close the door on the previous season in more ways than one. This time, the close was dramatic. Along with my cousin, Frank, I preached the funeral for a very dear friend, Karen DeGroot, at the Country Church. 

The glow of the lights from the inside were welcoming under a sky where the gray clouds hung low over the harvested fields. The beautiful building was bursting at the seams on this wet and windy day in November and as Traci and I walked in the sanctuary we were greeted by people I hadn’t seen in more than 30 years. Frank, still on oxygen from visiting the edge of death in the hospital with Covid, preached like the roof was on fire. At one point I thought he might settle down and pace himself, but instead he reached back and turned up the oxygen full blast. That’s Frank. My childhood friends, Dave and Chad, who were at the first barn revival my Dad did in the early 80’s, were there. It was as if there was this leap from childhood to adulthood where the conversations that happened tied together the gaps of time into a complete picture as we simply heard the updates on where life has taken us. Isn’t it interesting how seasons have a way of taking you on an unpredictable journey that you couldn’t have planned on if you tried? But the thing about seasons is that they change. 

The reminder of the changing of the seasons began to take shape as we found the warmth of kind connections brought together once again by the passing of a friend. The biting cold of the prairie winds, famous for being so strong and consistent over buffalo ridge, met us at the graveside as the temperature fell below freezing. They’re a hearty bunch, Midwesterners. Like a herd of buffalo huddling in a blizzard, the crowd of black clad mourners stood in solidarity to celebrate a life well lived. For the young mother in the crowd holding her infant, the changing of the seasons was wonderful, even if she didn’t feel prepared to be a mother yet. For the DeGroot family shivering together on folding chairs under the tent that day, it was a moment painfully marked by the handoff of a life too soon. For many of us, seasons change way too quickly. As the service concluded and people made their way to their cars, the flurries began to swirl around in the air like excited children running out to recess. The passing of a life and the passing of the season, the last breath of day and the first dusting of Winter, it all speaks to the way that God has orchestrated this world where everything and everyone eventually engages in a forced handoff of sorts. The scorching heat of Summer gives way to Fall, as the leaves of Autumn which change from green to yellow to red seem to signal us in a universal understanding that even nature tells us when to slow down and prepare to let go. Yet what we let go of is never truly lost. It only gets picked up by the next generation and carried further into the unknown. 

At Christmas time, God reminds us that even He surrendered Himself to the processing of seasons. We enter this world and surrender to the direction of our parents. He entered the world surrendered to the direction of Joseph and Mary. We grow and are faced with decisions and choices and hopefully we learn to live in obedience to our Heavenly Father, even if it comes through suffering. Jesus grew and was faced with decisions and choices and Hebrews 5 literally says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. We come to the end of our season on earth, often too soon, and as much of a struggle as it may be, we are forced to let go. 

Jesus faced this same conflict as he appealed to the Father to find another way to transition the season ahead as he was going to the cross. There was no alternative presented in that moment, and even the Son of God now had to experience letting go. Thankfully, his cross became our victory and now we celebrate his birth for the same reason. It’s an unreasonable reality that God would step into our stories and seasons and include us in his victory and resurrection. But he’s not afraid of the unreasonable and he is the Lord of reality. At this time of year, slow down and remember that this life is an exercise in letting go. Who have you encouraged? Who are you empowering? Who are you training and teaching as a disciple? Every one of us has been given the task to make disciples. At some point, every teacher must help every student to become a teacher themselves. 

Embracing the changing of the seasons helps us realize that we can’t take up space forever, no matter how much wealth or success we experience in this life. We are to live to give away whatever wisdom or influence we can to those who come behind us so they’re more equipped for what’s ahead than we ever were. This Christmas, take a moment around the table to recognize the people God has placed in your path of influence, and ask the Lord to guide you victorious through the seasons ahead. We are equipped to live victorious nomatter what season it is, and when life gets confusing and complicated, remember that it all began in a barn.

Bill Vanderbush

Masked, Canceled, and Woke (Transcribed from the podcast)

Does the grace of Jesus have anything to say about the hot button issues of the day? Absolutely it does. So today we’re going to take a fresh perspective on three big ones. 

Most of our complaining comes from the fact that we don’t know how powerful we really are. When we feel overpowered by outside forces, we feel helpless and hopeless and we complain about it. I think this is why Paul said in Phil 2:14 to do everything without grumbling or complaining. The deeper revelation is that everything we complain about we have probably contributed to in some way. For example. Have you been irritated or even infuriated about being mandated to wear a mask? I was. And I was complaining to the Lord and my friends about it, not quite in that order. I found other people far more cooperative in agreeing with my complaining that the Lord was. I was somewhat cut with conviction when I felt him say, “Bill, why are you so bothered by wearing a mask now? You’ve been wearing them for years.” I immediately saw flashing through my mind all of the doors of churches I’ve walked into in the past year with signs on them that read, “Must have mask to enter.” And I realized that in the spirit that sign has been hanging on most church doors for years. Think about it. You may have had the worst week of your life, or may have fought with your wife and kids on the way to church, but the minute you hit the church door and someone asks how you’re doing you say, “Blessed and highly favored.” If we preach vulnerable transparency but live a spiritually masked life, we can’t blame the world for not taking our message seriously. So we’ve made it easy to live masking our broken places. And I get it. We’re supposed to be examples of moral virtue, and in trying our best to present that image the maintenance of a spiritual facade has become an art form. I’ve served in enough church staff situations to be able to tell you that the unity or holiness you see from where the audience sits is not always the case behind the scenes. Now I’m not saying we need to flaunt our brokenness and air all our issues. But I AM saying that we need to develop trusted relationships where we can be vulnerable about our brokenness. Have a few close friends and fathers in the faith who you can be completely open with, and make one of them your spouse. James pointed us in the direction of wholeness when he said confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that ye may be healed. Don’t just find any “another” to confess to. Find another who will actually pray FOR you, not gossip ABOUT you. I think that’s probably why we have a hard time with unmasking in a culture of faith where righteousness by works is held as a virtue. This is why making a shift to a culture of righteousness by grace is so necessary. Grace purifies the motive for good works, because under grace you’re not working to get anything from God or prove anything to anyone. A life laid down to surrender to the voice and direction of the Lord is an act of Love when you already know that you’re accepted by grace. 

If you get transparent before the wrong people, prepare to be cancelled. And that leads me to another modern complaint. Cancel Culture. Have you heard this term? It refers to the current trend to scrutinize the past actions and words of every person to find any place where they behaved badly in word or deed, and then to declare them done, over, cancelled. Right behind my irritation with masks was this personal outrage over the fact that the secular culture, that had in past decades released a flood of soul sewage into our lives without apology, now presumed the right to morally judge the world. How dare they, I thought. They have no right to judge anyone. That’s what WE do… And then I realized, we invented cancel culture. Just like the masks, I found myself complaining about a culture of our own making. The church has been canceling people for years. We decide who is qualified for ministry and who isn’t based on a whole bunch of criteria that I now imagine that God probably doesn’t prioritize. I once thought that if you studied enough apologetics and gained enough knowledge where you could out argue any atheist or agnostic, that level of gained wisdom would keep you in a holy zone of monastic purity. --------- pretty much killed that theory. Maybe if you were a hip charismatic leader with a slamming wit and decent enough messages to blow up your brand into megastardom, that level of altitude before men would hold you fast to the pedestal you were on. ------- brought that notion crashing down. What if you were a seasoned prophet with signs and wonders in your bio, a fierce national loyalty, and a no compromise attitude toward the word of the Lord. Could that keep you from compromise? When Newsweek published the article about ---------, I knew that wasn’t the case either. So I realized that academic wisdom, magnetic charisma, and prophetic success can all come crashing down in a moment. The one thing these leaders need right now, that the world needs to see and hear from the church, is the Gospel of the grace of God. Unless we get this beautiful revelation of the grace of God that can restore the fallen, we will continue to present a facade that a fallen world can’t relate to, and we will never discover the mystery of the message of the Gospel that drew the fallen to Christ. As you’ve heard me say before, grace is not something we fall from. It’s someone we fall into. Most of our messes come from giving in to an anti-christ spirit. Here’s what I mean by that. If you look up the Greek for the word that’s translated as Antichrist, you’ll discover something remarkable. Anti, in this sense, doesn’t mean opposed to. It means “instead of.” Now this is very important because It’s common for us to assume that the antichrist spirit would be easy to spot by the violent or forceful opposition to anything related to Christ. But this isn’t the case. It simply means setting Christ aside to focus on something else. Christ can still be in your life but he’s no longer front and center. Money, fame, politics, and building our personal ministry brand can take center stage in our lives all too easily. Pretty soon, we find ourselves going to ridiculous lengths to make the Gospel more attractive to the world.

My wife, Traci, got up in a church right before Covid took over the news and gave a powerfully uncomfortable word. She’s kind of good at doing this. She said, “The bride of Christ is having her implants removed in this next year.” I began to sweat nervously wondering where in the world she and God were going with this. She continued by saying, “We have made ourselves sick by introducing artificial enhancements to the body to make her more attractive to the world.” Traci was never one for tickling ears. Lest we thought this was a product of her imagination, a prophetic friend of ours, Charlie Coker, got the same word on the same day a thousand miles away. Kind of like the time she told a church that they were spiritually constipated, but God was going to give them a release so things could freely flow once again. It would be messy but in the clean up they would learn to work as one. After this, every toilet in the church literally backed up and overflowed causing quite a mess as you might imagine, but as people worked together to clean up the mess, it certainly drove the point home. 

Christ won’t be relegated to second or third place in our lives. I’ve checked the Scriptures today and Matthew 6:33 still says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God…” It doesn’t seem to matter what’s going on in the nation, politics, the stock market, or the world. That verse never changes to seek second or seek third the Kingdom. We can’t seek the kingdom without the King. And Jesus Christ is king. So we never deviate from fixing our eyes on Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. Jesus is drawing the gaze of his bride back to the fire in his eyes.

A friend of mine who used to be a judge in central Texas heard of Traci’s word about the bride and offered this insight. She had once owned a wedding venue and had spent ten years dealing with brides and realized that so much of the western culture about brides doesn’t line up with the Bride Jesus is coming for. Christ isn’t coming back for a bridezilla. But our holiness and perfection are not a work of the flesh, or the quality of our masks, or the purging of our culture through cancellation. Our righteousness is ONLY based upon the blood of Jesus Christ. His was grace revealed in the resurrection when he didn’t drop the gavel on everyone who cheered his crucifixion. In the resurrection he has no words of vengeance or revenge. He simply tells the disciples in John 20:23 whoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven. In Matthew 6 he takes unforgiveness off the table as an option. Cancel culture is not the Kingdom of God. What he is cancelling is all of the lies and labels we have believed about ourselves and others. He’s cancelling our sin based identities.

But somebody’s gotta be the judge right? And if we can judge, we can certainly cancel right?

As far as the Bible is concerned there are only two things we are to judge. We can judge prophecy and angels. But what about people?

Hebrews 12:23 calls Father God the judge of all. But…

Jesus, in John 5:22 says the Father judges no one, but has given all judgement to the Son. But…

Jesus says in John 8:15 I judge no man.

So the Father isn’t judging us, though he certainly could.

The son isn’t judging us, though he certainly could.

Then where does the judgement come from?

It comes from us. Jesus told us in Luke 6:37 not to judge because to the degree we judge another we will receive the same in return. The verse right after that, verse 38, is the one that always gets quoted for offerings in church. “Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.” That verse has nothing to do with money, but rather with the giving of judgement. So why do we do it?

Jesus tell us in John 5:45 when he said I’m not accusing you, but you do have an accuser. He says the accuser is Moses, but it’s not Moses fault. They made Moses their accuser by taking his words and turning them into rules rather than letting those words lead them to Jesus. The Gospel isn’t the way to righteousness. The Gospel is the way to Jesus, and Jesus is the way to righteousness. We don’t get any grace apart from Christ alone. And we can’t freely give what we haven’t freely received. If you’ve worked to feel righteous, you’ll make other’s pay the same price. If you’ve come to realize that grace is a gift for those who need it, not a reward for those who deserve it, then you’ll give it away freely. What people freely give reveals what they freely have. The truth is that the reckless grace of Christ has been offered to us all, without exception. From the porn star to the preacher, from the holy to the hypocrite, the grace of Christ doesn’t discriminate. It’s been accepted by some, rejected by others, but offered to all. 

But even when it looks like an entire generation is rejecting Christ, don’t lose hope. I learned this the hard way in a recent conversation with a dear friend and incredible Bible teacher, Lynn Hiles. Sitting across a table where we were having dinner I said, “I feel like the next generation is dead to the things of God.” Lynn shared something with me that I’ll never forget and I believe is a timely word for us all. “Do you remember the story of the woman with the issue of blood who touched the hem of Jesus garment in a crowd and was healed?” I did. “Did you ever ask yourself where Jesus was going in that story?” I thought about it a minute, searching my memory for the right answer. “He was going to raise Jairus’ daughter from the dead.” “Right” said Lynn. “He would have been there sooner but he was delayed by the older generation because of an issue in their blood. She was bleeding where she was supposed to be birthing. And do you know how you’re ready to give birth again? You stop bleeding. Jesus heals her and deals with the demand of the moment, but then continues his journey. When he arrives at the house, everyone says she’s dead, but what does Jesus say? She’s not dead, but she’s just asleep. He has come to awaken her.” The crowd that has gathered to mourn the girl begins to mock the messiah. Jesus sends all of the mockers out of the room and then raises her from the dead. The first thing Jesus says to do is to give her something to eat. Revival must be accompanied by teaching, getting nourished buy the word of the Lord. What was she after that encounter with Jesus? Woke. Could it be that God has stirred the language of awakening within the hearts of the next generation and they’re searching for an authentic awakening encounter with God? I realized that perhaps the irritation with the woke language many are hearing comes from the painful realization that the authentic Gospel they’re searching for they’re not finding in us. The language of awakening reveals a heart prepared for change, for transformation, for revival. I believe God is preparing this next generation to receive the great awakening we have been praying for, because God does not stir within us a cry for revival that he does not intend to answer. 

You see, whether it’s masks, cancel culture, or the woke movement, these are all physical manifestations of a greater spiritual reality. We are reaping in the flesh what we have sown in the Spirit.

Today I want to pray that your eyes would be open to see how powerful you really are, and to realize that there is weight on your words, and to understand that God has equipped you with everything necessary to live this life as an overcomer walking in the light of his glory and grace.

The Price of Unleaded Happiness

Wander into Lange’s Cafe in Pipestone, MN, and you’ll see the same sight I grew up with. A diner filled with old farmers talking about all things related to dirt. These are rugged Americans with calloused hands and warm hearts. It’s not blood flowing through the veins of the Midwesterner. It’s coffee. And that coffee wasn’t fancy, it didn’t have a name that was hard to pronounce, and it didn’t cost five bucks a cup. Midwest coffee only came in two varieties, regular and unleaded.

Then there was the cup. It was a standard glazed, off white, thick rimmed mug that weighed twice as much as it looked like it did. It would also make a lethal weapon. It’s a testimony to the peaceful kindness of the Midwesterner that someone hasn’t been killed with a mug in a conflict over a cow, hog, or woman.

But it’s the balance of the weight as you tip it toward your mouth, the feel of the glazed pottery as the piping hot coffee pours over your taste buds, and the sound of the sip that fills the Midwestern cafe with a symphony of slurping. These folks are virtuosos at their instrument. And today I found one of my own.

If you saw my collection of coffee mugs, you might be tempted to stage an intervention. Yet this morning, right here in Orlando, I found the classic Midwest mug. I filled it with plain black coffee and sat down to a literal mug of liquid joy. Happiness isn’t expensive, but it is priceless. When you’ve had something as common as a thick rimmed coffee mug in your world every day, you might just miss it if it’s ever gone. And when you find it again, you might just pay any price to bring it home.

Sorry

I wish that word had more power. Like the power to heal a heart like the person saying it wished it did. The power to stop the hurting forever. The power to reverse and reset everything the way it should have been. The power to not have become the person the choices made you. The truth is, that word has as much power as the person receiving it determines that it does. To one wronged and harmed by another, the word may be the lifelong quest that they feel they need to hear to move on. Yet even when you hear it, it doesn't matter. How many times have you heard or said, "Sorry just isn't good enough." or "Sorry just won't cut it." or "It's too late for that." The demand for justice now merely begins with sorry. But the onslaught of punishment won't be held back until we come to realize that you can't inflict enough pain on another to cause it to cease within you.

Jesus didn't wait for our "sorry" to forgive. When hanging on a cross, dying beneath the sneers and stares of the brokers of religion and even a mocking thief sharing His fate, Jesus says, "Father forgive them. They don't understand what they're doing." Jesus wasn't appealing to a reluctant God, for He only said what He heard His Father say. Jesus was revealing the heart of God toward us at our worst. His grace isn't a reward for us generating enough goodness to become sorry. His grace is the kindness that draws us to realize that we were wrong. Yet while that realization may result in our brokenness, His grace continues and creates a kaleidoscope out of our shattered pieces. The light of the world shines even through the broken, and the prism of hope that illuminates a darkened world is a rainbow of grace. Grace is both the response to and the initiator of a heart that is truly from the depths of it's very being......sorry. Let this light shine upon you. To all those who have anything to be sorry for today, grace to you.

What's wrong with what's wrong?

What's wrong with "What's wrong?" Ever hear people ask the question, "What's wrong?" whenever something's going on that they don't understand? Everyone goes silent and the air gets sucked out of the room. Fear fueled curiosity widens everyone's eyes as all attention goes to the "victim." This is a great way to teach children to become the center of attention by being problem focused rather than problem solvers. Eventually someone like a boss or drill sergeant will respond to a whining complaint from that kid by getting in their face and asking, "What are you going to do about it?" So how can you teach your kids to be solution focused problem solvers? And how do you learn to be a faith filled listener rather than an anxiety ridden fear seeker?

Let's go back to the question at hand. The question, "What's wrong" opens you up to an avalanche of complaint. Mental self torment your kind of thing? Poking that wound until it bleeds all over you is a great way to make your day the opposite of better. Instead try asking these questions instead. "What happened, what's happening?" This question invites a perspective, a story, and puts freedom into the conversational equation. It doesn't assume or assign the identity of a victim and it doesn't put a negative knee jerk reaction of fear or panic into the atmosphere. Most of all it offers dignity to the one that something "happened" to. Because it doesn't invite them to become a victim in the story, they have a chance to get their power back.

Jesus encountered people who had issues all the time. They surrounded Him and bombarded him with medical and personal issues. He never once focused on the problem. He listened to people's stories and offered solutions. There was never an ounce of panic in His tone. Though He faced anxiety head on He was never without access to the solution. The disciples had a confidence in this. How do I know? Because in the garden He sweat blood beneath the crushing weight of what was to come, surrounded by disciples who never once asked, "What's wrong?" He was so conscious of the endless resources of heaven at His disposal that it never crossed the minds of His followers to consider that their Master was dealing with something deeper than they could fathom. Here's the question I wish beyond anything that they would have asked Him. "What's happening?" This may have provided some insight, clarity, and revelation. And isn't this what questions are supposed to produce? When we lose sight of why we're asking the questions we're asking, we don't mind asking the wrong ones. Dig into the stories before you by caring to hear of the happenings around you and you'll find yourself in a world of clarity rather than confusion.

The Communion of Breath

The origin of man as Spirit is in the heart of God, and the birth of man as a physical being is in the breath of God. Man was born in a face to face encounter with God.

You said your first prayer when you took your first breath.

Our ability to condemn ourselves only reveals how blind we are to our union with Christ because if we knew how close we were to Him we would never condemn ourselves. Our sin nature is merely an excuse for our bad choices.

Meister Eckhart - “If the only prayer you ever pray is thank you, that will be enough.”

Prayer is the privilege of our union with God. It’s the embrace of a union that has no goodbye. Every breath is a prayer.

His Name is in our breath.

Relationship introduces creative interaction. It’s allowing the wind of the Holy Spirit to fill the sails of your vessel and letting the wind propel you toward your destiny.

He is both the goal and the guide. He is both the journey and the destination.

Yahweh is not just for you. He’s in you. You do not carry a God free zone. It’s like swimming. I move to engage with my environment. Lifting hands isn’t separation. Physical expression is not to get the attention of a God outside of us. God is within us.

Every human being speaks the name of God in every breath. This is how we pray without ceasing. If we stop praying we will cease to live.

A Different Take on Balancing Life and Ministry

From my perspective, the whole concept of balance IS stress. Go stand on a fencepost. Feel relaxed? Here’s another way to look at it. Take a rope in each hand tied to two horses running in different directions. One horse is called life and the other is called ministry. If you dare to let go of one, the other will drag you to your death anyway. Again, more stress. I got used to saying no and found that the respect level went through the roof when I did, because it gave my “yes” much more value. I’m just wherever I am 100% and enjoy every moment of it to the fullest. 

Drink deeply the life out of every moment. When you’re in the office studying, love every conversation, every turn of the page and plink of the keyboard. When you’re home or out with the family love every second of the experience. Love it intentionally. Love information, love learning, love rest, love people, love being in love with someone that’s worth loving. Love making them smile. Live abundant love and you'll find abundant life. There’s no other way to do this ministry life without becoming a workaholic, a lethargic loner, or broke and bitter theologian. Fun is a Spiritual gift. Exercise that gift often and people will always want to be around you. 

So take those two horses of life and ministry and hitch them together and make them take you to where you want to go. That’s balance. You, in the saddle, holding the reins, enjoying your bride and kids, picking up people along the way, dropping off supplies here and there, and letting life and ministry work together to bring you where you’re going. And don't forget to enjoy the ride.

Stir it Up

I'm not starting this with anything in particular to write.  It's just that I haven't written in awhile so I'm going to stir the pot and see if anything of substance rises to the surface.  Saying something has never been a problem.  It's saying something worth saying that's the issue.  I've been in a season of listening and hearing, seeing and perceiving, this morning in particular spent digesting Psalm 27.  The writer makes a stunning declaration when he says, "one thing have I desired of the Lord and that will I seek after..."  That's the part that's stunning to me.  More than what He seeks, it's that he reduced his entire life down to one thing.  It's that refined focus that vocalizes that I'm alive for a single purpose.  Have you reduced your life to one desire?  Is there one cry in you that encompasses it all?  The one thing is to live in the manifest presence of His glory and from that place make Him known.  It amounts not just for us but for the impact of His glory to shape the world around us.  "...that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple..."  What just rocks me about this is that the fulfillment of that one thing leads to another quest.  To be in that place of beholding is what qualifies you to inquire.  It's what grants you access to the place of greater breakthrough in wisdom and revelation.  The Psalm finishes up with a common admonishment in Scripture.  Wait on the Lord.  There's a few meanings that can be applied here and they're all profound and though different, all work.  One is to exercise a measure of patience, to surrender your agenda to His plan. (Prov 3:5,6)  Another is to attend to serving Him.  To bring to him what He desires as the master at a table and you, His servant.  (Ezekiel 44, Luke 17)  Still another is to set an ambush.  To set an ambush for God? That's about living in such a way that your direction can be diverted, spontaneous, and stripped of a predetermining agenda. Dip your toes in Psalm 27, stir that prayer around, and see what comes to the surface for you.

Agape

If you dare to squint the eyes of your heart to see the good in people, you may get blinded by the twisted, the broken, the parched, the frayed, razor edges of their darkest garbage thrown at you by the wind of their God empowered will. The blood of the Healer is a theory unrealized beyond our mind when it’s chosen a path from which culture won’t allow you to recover. We stumble and fall, we fall hard and far, and we are lost.

Lying broken and bent on the canyon floor of our fallenness, the walls of the chasm bearing down on us, taunting us to climb with limbs shattered and jutting from gaping wounds of guilt and shame. Jesus’ words echo down the walls and grace comes like the rain and the sun together conspire to cure the cold and the thirst that sin has left us with. When we did it right we hated the Healer who resurrected our scapegoats. We tore into Him with more than words. When we did it wrong we found no other friend than the one hanging next to us on the cross. 

I have been the common thief hanging in a state of guilt next to sinless perfection. I catch His eyes and I know, Jesus loves me. Jesus doesn’t have to squint His eyes to see goodness in me. It’s all He sees. He put it there. And now I know that I’m not meant to remain in this state. Redemption and resurrection conspire to restore and regenerate until we are lifted beyond even where you were to heights above the clouds where shadows of darkness, secrets, and lies have nothing more to hide behind. Born in flight upon eagles wings, the Son of righteousness carries you in healing into a resurrected abundance with Him. And there you are at rest in the agape of the Father forevermore.

Hard Lessons

Hard lessons from 26 years of marriage that I want my kids to know. (1 minute 26 seconds of read time) 

You're going to do some things well, and you're going to do some things badly. When you do well and get praised, give it to God. Don't let accolades make you complacent. Success is a combination of dreaming and work. One without the other will not serve you well. 

When you hurt someone, own it and make it right. It's God that defines your eternity, and only He knows how forgiven you are. But it is your relationships with people that define the experience you have in this life. 

You won't gravitate to those who love you the most, but to those who accept you the most. When you allow those who accept you to rise above those who truly love you, somebody is going to get hurt. It will only be the grace of the people you hurt and the people who love you that keeps your life from being defined by your lowest moments. People who love you will protect you if you hurt them. People who merely accept you will destroy you if you hurt them. 

Surround yourself with people you can be completely transparent and vulnerable with. Choose those people wisely when you don't need them, because you're rarely thinking wisely when you do need them. But don't limit your council to your friends. Get a professional counselor in your life who has dismissed themselves from ever being a friend. That person may the most honest person you ever talk to. 

Rejection can be a brutal teacher. When people don't want to stand close to you, it's usually because you stepped in something. Selfishness is when you step in something on purpose and blame others for not accepting it. Selfishness is a rocket ride to a lonely life because when you step in something people don't want you walking into their house. 

Live a life filled with abundant experiences that you wouldn't mind telling your grandkids about. Judgement and grace are inevitable, but you only get to keep what you give away. Finally, everything, every moment, every breath, every heartbeat, will hinge on this question from Jesus Christ, "Who do you say that I am?" There is nothing more important than your answer to that question.

Life in Austin, Texas Was Like...Nicky the Stranger

(I never want to forget what it was like to live in the weirdest city in America. Austin will always be a home to me. This was in 2014.)

After an evening at Kerby Lane for a late night pancake gathering with friends, Traci and I pondered what else to do. Just up South Lamar was an English style pub that had late hours and the word 'grill' in the title, so we assumed they might serve food. Screens scattered around the faux old English decor were showing shark week, so we were hooked. Did you catch that? And that... I digress.

Being that is was open mic night we ordered fish and chips and settled in for some random amateur entertainment.  After a few jangly guitar tunes were plinked out by a variety of nervous bearded hipsters, a guy got up who was never gonna be famous but looked like he might die trying. He was a glorious train wreck of Pat Boone, Cirque du Soleil, a slam poet, and a game show host. He started out like Leonard Cohen or Barry White singing to a track and suddenly shed the white suit coat for a blue sequin coat underneath.  A couple of spins and a backflip later this guy (who goes by the name Nicky the Stranger) is leading the pub in a singalong of a song that was entirely made up of words impossible to decipher. It was so oddly mesmerizing that I didn't even think to snap a pic.

When he finished to a chorus of cheers the MC said with a hint of semi sarcasm, "Thanks, Nicky. Always a nice change of pace from the usual." Shark week, a fake British Pub, and Nicky the Stranger in his sparkly blue glory. What a wonderful, weird Sunday night in Austin, Texas.

A New Covenant Clarity

Everything from the Old Covenant needs to be interpreted through the New Covenant. In the New Covenant we have 1 Corinthians 13 (Love keeps no record of wrongs, never fails, etc), 1 John 4:7-8 “…Love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” And the words of Jesus leading up to the cross, “Love your enemies” Luke 6:31.

The New Covenant didn’t change the nature of God, but it did shift how He deals with mankind. "Now, in Christ, we who were afar off have been brought near by His blood” Eph 2:13. The blood of the New Covenant abolished the old covenant (detailed in Ephesians 2) and brought us into adoption as heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ.

We now revisit the old covenant simply to celebrate what the cross and resurrection accomplished. We don’t throw away that glorious New to re-embrace the blind fearful foreboding of the old. I don't view Old Testament verses on hate as elevated above the New Covenant verses on love. Ephesians 2. The Old Covenant was nailed to the cross. Romans 8. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death. I don't know what was happening back then to cause them to interpret what they were getting as the hatred of God towards man, but in Christ we get a different picture. If He commands us to love our enemies, what do you think He does with His?

Hebrews 1:3 says Jesus is the exact representation of the Father's nature. So anything I find in the old covenant that I can't substantiate in the life of Jesus Christ, we have reason to question. The Old Covenant was one big question to which Jesus is the answer. John 5:35. So I'll never exalt an old covenant perspective of God over the clear representation of Christ. When you have a contrast between the old and the new you don't have to try to reinterpret the old, rather simply align with the new covenant and thank Him for it.

Busyness

"Busyness is artificial significance." Bill Johnson.

Busyness isn't the cure for laziness. To me, laziness isn't a lack of activity. It's a lack of productivity. To be unproductive is to be unfruitful. And if a person is killing themselves with activity that bears no fruit, that's poor stewardship of time and energy. Make every action an investment in which you attempt as much as possible to be conscious of a return. It's not saying, "What will I get out of this?" because it's not always about you. But saying, "What fruit could this effort produce?" It is the second question that fuels the dreams within you. In the Kingdom of God, His priorities are paramount. If you take care of what's important to God, He will take care of what's important to you.

Why I Believe

I believe in God because of Jesus. I believe in Jesus because of the resurrection. And I believe in the resurrection because of the disciples. We can argue the existence of God, the validity of Jesus, or the legitimacy of the resurrection. But the life and death of each of the disciples is the greatest historical case for the resurrection. These men, one moment huddling in fear, have an encounter with the resurrected Christ, and that changes them forever. Ordinary men don’t die for a lie. And each of them separately, with no way to easily contact the other, was killed or tortured and none of them ever said, “Stop! We made the whole thing up.” That’s simply astonishing.

How did they die?

James was the first Apostle to be martyred. Herod Agrippa seized him when he was in Jerusalem in the year 42 and had him beheaded. Andrew preached the Gospel in Turkey, Greece, and Macedonia. He was crucified in Achaia at Patras in the year 61. Tied to an X-shaped cross after being scourged, he hung there he preached to people for two days before he died. Peter was martyred by Nero in the year 67. Peter was crucified, by request, upside down, out of reverence for Jesus. His request was granted. Paul was beheaded on the same day as Peter outside the walls of Rome. Simon was crucified at Edessa in the year 67. Matthew preached in Africa and was martyred by the sword in the year 65 in Ethiopia. Thomas was stabbed to death at Mylapore, India, in the year 74. Matthias (who replaced Judas) was crucified in the year 65. Jude was clubbed to death the same year in Persia. James the less had it rough in Jerusalem. The religious leaders took him to the pinnacle of the temple and told him to renounce Christ before all the people who were gathered below. Instead he proclaimed Christ resurrected and they cast him off. Still living after he hit the ground, a man stepped forward and smashed his head in with a club. Philip preached the Gospel in Greece and he was martyred at Hierapolis in Persia in the year 62. Like Peter, he was crucified upside down. Bartholomew was skinned alive in Armenia in the year 72. John was the only one not martyred. However, in the year 95, he was taken prisoner at Ephesus and sent to trial in Rome. Sentenced to death, he was boiled in oil before the Latin gate. Miraculously he survived and was exiled to the island of Patmos. He was later freed and died at Ephesus in the year 100 when he was eighty-eight years old.

So this Easter, I’m compelled to look around me at the arguments of people against the existence of God and the validity of Jesus, and each one has their theories. But the resurrection has moved from theory to fact in my heart because of my own encounter with the resurrected Christ. I understand now, how these men found a cause worth living and dying for. And it’s their lives, message, and deaths that solidify for me the truth of the resurrection, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the everlasting love of the Father. May Easter weekend bring each of you a life changing encounter with the resurrected Christ.

(For anyone who wants to do research on this, I highly recommend Historian Michael Licona’s incredible work called, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach”. At 700 pages and more than 2000 footnotes, Licona has done his homework. Also for the especially studious scholar, see the writings of historian, Josephus, Eusebius, and the early church fathers such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Dionysius of Corinth, Irenaeus, Tertullian and the list goes on.)

Interwoven in Christ

Col 2:2-3 Paul’s outlining the priorities for what he wants to see in every believer and every church here in this verse and it’s staggering and incredible.

…that their hearts may be encouraged…

When you face loss or disappointment it’s called “hope deferred”. The result is that it makes the heart sick. But Paul is stating the clarity of focus here is that you would have an encouraged heart. A heart filled with courage stands in the present with confidence and looks toward the future with bold expectancy. Whatever circumstances lie between you and your destiny, we are continually strengthened by the knowledge that the end of this journey is a joy that nothing can take away.

…having been knit together in love… 

Jesus declared that we would know that we are one with Him in John 14. Then He prayed that we would be one with each other in John 17. In Christ we have been interwoven into a tapestry of Love Himself. The Holy Spirit has a high value for union and unity. The declaration itself doesn’t make it reality without our willful alignment to the desire of His heart.

…and attaining to all the wealth that comes from full assurance of understanding that results in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

The boundless riches of the Gospel are accessed when you have settled on this singularity as the foundation of every moment and movement of your being. Christ. So then when Paul makes statements about Christ in the rest of the letter, He is unveiling that wealth with statements like “Christ is all and in all” and “in Him you have been made complete”. Our union with Him is the source of all wisdom.

Deep Lessons

We learn some of the deepest lessons in some of the darkest valleys. But we don't often realize what we've learned in the valley of the shadow until we have walked far enough to see the sun again. Don't stay in the valley. Keep walking. When you feel the sun, then turn and teach another what you have learned. Words forged by experience are far richer than untested notions. ~ Bill Vanderbush

What Pain Sounds Like

The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit! But for many their experience with Christianity as a religion is not life giving. We recently invited thousands of members of a closed study group to bare their heart and share the honest and uncensored condition of their heart from their current perspective. Sometimes people need to be heard before they want to be healed. Here are some unedited statements.

Can you relate to any of these?
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I feel like if I let go that people won't like who I really am.

I believe there is something inherently wrong with me, that I never fit in.

I have thought of myself as a failure and that God couldn't possibly love me because I fail continuously.

I often believe that I'm unlikeable, or that there's something wrong with me that I'll never fully understand.

I believe that I am the one person who is not deserving of what God has done for me.

I've often felt unforgivable for the terrible things I've done.

That I am the unwanted child, saved because God promised I would be but not wanted, adored, or loved.

I have often felt like a failure because of continually falling back into the same sin. Why would God extend grace to me if I keep breaking His heart?

I tie how I think my husband feels about me to how God feels about me.

Quite honestly I am mad and feel abandoned. I bow my head to pray and then I stop because I think what is the use - he may be listening but he doesn't care. Or is he really listening - really? Is he even there?

Is there really a God that loves and hears me?

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I feel like if I let go that people won't like who I really am.

I believe there is something inherently wrong with me, that I never fit in.

I have thought of myself as a failure and that God couldn't possibly love me because I fail continuously.

I often believe I am stuck in life, going nowhere.

I often believe that I'm unlikeable, or that there's something wrong with me that I'll never fully understand.

I believe that I am the one person who is not deserving of what God has done for me.

I've often felt unforgivable for the terrible things I've done.

I often feel like I'm a burden.

That I am the unwanted child, saved because God promised I would be but not wanted, adored, or loved.

I have often felt like a failure because of continually falling back into the same sin. Why would God extend grace to me if I keep breaking His heart?

I tie how I think my husband feels about me to how God feels about me.

Quite honestly I am mad and feel abandoned. I bow my head to pray and then I stop because I think what is the use - he may be listening but he doesn't care. Or is he really listening - really? Is he even there?

Is there really a God that loves and hears me?

What's the Point of Prayer and Fasting?

Disciplines like prayer and fasting don't make God. They make me. There's no arm twisting or begging of God in these things. They are reminders of Spirit, a focused intention tending to the roots of faith in the soil of the heart. The disciplines of of prayer and fasting kill unbelief and give rise to an awareness that we are more than mere flesh and form. We don't do these things because we are becoming something. We do these things to become aware of who we are. When you lose yourself, return to prayer. When your heart is darkened by foolishness, return to fasting. When you forget who you are, pray and listen. When you're offended at God, fast and detox. These aren't dead religious works unless they become lifeless habit. They are an infusion of Presence in purposeful acts of life-giving worship. In prayer and fasting, I awaken and align to who the Father has always known me to be from before the foundation of the world. These disciplines keep me from becoming consumed with me. The desire for things diminishes as the awareness of the Spirit is illuminated in clarity. If you have lost and let go of these disciplines in an effort to rest in a revelation of grace, I encourage you to revisit some of these disciplines that were so important to Jesus Christ. Let the Spirit draw you to them and them to you and in that drawing you will find the Spirit life and depth of soul tie with God that you longed to discover when you said your first prayer. 

God and Sin

Anything that dulls my sensitivity to or awareness of the presence of God or perpetuates the illusion of separation. But what if someone doesn't believe in God? I think it's commonly stated that without God there is no sin for it is believed that sin is purely a religious construct. But I would say that the ONLY way there is no sin is with God. Without God each person does what's right in his own eyes thereby creating their own system of conduct and rules by which we govern our interactions. It's that condition of defining right and wrong apart from God that perpetuates the distance and separation between people. Everyone has their own rules and definition, and who's to say that one is more valid than another? But Jesus lifts us beyond our own definitions, destroys sin, reconciles union, restores relationship, and speaks a word of grace that makes genuine love manifest. It is that love and grace that makes us one. It's that oneness that manifests peace.

Is God Disappointed In You?

• God is not disappointed in you. That's a statement I've made often in talking about The Forgotten Way. So a question I get often is how is it that God isn't disappointed in us? The bigger question would be is God infinite and complete? If so, then temporal expressions of loss and lack cannot take away from that which is infinite and complete. We all wrestle with the temporal vs the eternal. Both time and eternity have progression. Time moves from the beginning to the end. That which is eternal has the beginning and the end together as one. To subject God to time would be to adopt the perspective that God is enslaved by His own creation, which would make Him very weak indeed. And weak is certainly one thing that God is not. After all, in 1 Corinthians 3:21 Paul says that all things are yours, and in the list he includes time.

  
  

  So back to the issue of disappointment. The verse we're going to look at is Ephesians 4:30-32 which encourages us to avoid grieving the Holy Spirit. The Greek word here is Lupeo which means to affect with sadness or heaviness. Matter of fact in 1 Peter 1:6 the same word is translated as heaviness and the context there is that you've been made heavy with temptations. Sadness and heaviness is a temporal blindness to the manifest joy of an eternal victory. When we can't see the eternal victory, but only feel the weight of the temporal circumstance, we react and act out of a temporal perspective. We feel sad when we lose hope and we feel heavy when we lose heart. But from an eternal perspective we are forgiven and victorious. Eph 4:32 says we've already been forgiven. (Christ forgave i.e., past tense) The bitterness, wrath, anger, etc that we express is a symptom of a temporal blindness to how forgiven and free we are in Christ. So we give off expressions of a false identity. But that doesn't disappoint God. Sadness or heaviness isn't disappointment. There is a word for disappoint in GK which is kataischynō from Romans 5:5 which means to put to shame. When someone is disappointed in us it opens us up to be ashamed. We know what Christ has done with shame. He takes it from us. 

  
  

  He has injected Himself into our story and walks it with us even though He knows the end from the beginning. He feels what we feel and even in our own blindness the river of redemption never stops flowing. Consider the prodigal son story, where the Father expresses sorrow, but not disappointment. Disappointment has given up all hope and attached a label of shame and guilt to a person or situation. The Father in the story had sadness and sorrow at the sons "death" but an absolute hope that his son's identity was never beyond redemption. He says to the older brother that the younger son "was dead but is alive again". While we were dead, Christ made us alive. So He can experience sadness and sorrow at our blindness while maintaining hope in our redemption which he has already freely given. He never loses heart and never gives up hope.