Live the Dream | Lead the Mission | Engage the World
For those of you who have been so faithful to pray, I wanted to post a pic of those who are our companions in this journey. Not all of them will be joining us in Spain, but all are essential parts of this movement called Pathways. May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us all…
The past several weeks have been challenging ones for us pretty much across the entire arena of life. As you can see from the content of this blog, our family is involved in a relatively significant life transition…a transition which is encompassing to every facet of our lives. On top of that, we have the normal pressures of life…two delightful, but very energetic boys, a relatively consuming full-time job, the emotional rollercoaster of the current real estate market, and the list goes on and on. I’m sure you feel the same sometimes: overwhelmed, frenetic, generally just ticked off. There have been many times in the past months when I’ve really asked that the Lord just cut me a little slack…those times when everything is going wrong, and I feel like I just need one thing to go right. After all, most of the stress in our life right now is directly derived from the fact that we’re seeking to follow His guidance in our lives. It stands to reason that as that is the case, He will do His part to meet us in the middle and to make the process as painless and as efficient as possible, right? That’s a big negative.
The reality is that when following the Lord, the path that He chooses to take us on is rarely the one of least resistance. In fact, I think you could make a strong Scriptural case that contrary to our American Church culture, the way of the Lord is rarely the one that we would deem to be “efficient” or “cost-effective”. Indeed, the Lord more times than not chooses to take His children the un-efficient and oftentimes uncertain “long way.”
Exodus 13 gives us one of the clearest Biblical examples of this truth. We join the Exodus story in chapter 13 as the Israelites are celebrating a moment of long-awaited victory over the Egyptian captors. As chapter 12 closed, we see that the Lord has enacted His final plague on the people of Egypt, striking down all of their firstborn sons, while sparing the sons of the children of the Israel. Pharaoh, overwhelmed by the power of God, releases the Israelite people to Moses’ care, and 600,000 men and their families set out as the newly freed people of God, enroute to their Promised Land…the one flowing with milk and honey. After 430 years of serving the Egyptian throne, and after serving as witnesses to God’s terrifying, but awe-inspiring intervention of history on their behalf, the children of God set out to fulfill their destiny as His people.Verse 17 of this passage, however is the telling verse. Moses writes,
“When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, ‘Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.’ But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea.”
In other words, after years of oppression and the long-awaited promise of relief and the fulfillment of their destiny, the children of Israel did not get to the Promised Land via the cost-efficient, quickest route. Nor was it the route of least resistance. As any map of the Exodus will show you, the quickest easiest route was for the Israelites to basically hug the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea all the way up to Canaan. However, the actual route of the Exodus was far, far from efficient and easy. It was indeed the extremely “long way.” Fascinating, isn’t it? While most of us would agree that the Lord certainly has the right to take us the “long way” as it were, when we stop and think about it, many of us struggle to understand why the heck He would take the Israelites on such a round-about route to Canaan. It makes no sense to our efficiency-sensitive mindsets. Scripture, however, tells us that the Lord knew that the people would change their minds and return to Egypt if they were forced into battle with the Philistines who ruled the territory of the “short way.”
For those of you who, like myself, are currently being taken the “long way,” take heart. The Lord is indeed guiding your path and moving you forward, even in the moments where you feel lost , hot, and tired. Perhaps He is taking you to a majestic out-of-the way mountain, where He can reveal His glory in awe-inspiring, life-changing ways. Perhaps He is protecting you from temptations that you are not yet equipped to resist. Perhaps He is putting you in a position to more clearly see Him working both in your life and in the lives of the people around you.
For the people of Israel, surely there were those amongst them that questioned the need to traverse deserts and seas and rivers and eat manna and quail for many, many more days than was necessary. Surely there were days when the miraculous got mundane and they were simply ready to “get there,” that is, to live out their calling. Surely there were days that they forgot that their calling as children of God had nothing to do with the place where they resided, and instead had everything to do with their character in the journey.
Likewise, we do well…I do well, to remember that the trials and challenges of the “long way” are here to build endurance and character in me, which gives birth to true hope (Romans 5.4). I would do well to remember that the salvation and redemption afforded to me by Christ is never mundane and is never secondary to whatever task or destiny I perceive the Lord has called me to. Finally, I would do well to remember that it is not for ministry or even for mission that I was made, but rather, I was made to reflect His glory in all aspects of the journey. If He chooses to take me the “long way” to further refine and polish that reflection, then my response should be to praise the name of Jesus, to the glory of God the Father…
For all of you who, like myself, have made a pastime of lurking on various blogs, here is the post for you. Below is a link to Kent Shaffer’s Top 100 Church Blogs. You’ll find insight and perspective from all veins of Christian thought… from the Reformed to the Emergent. Check out a couple of the blogs and add a few to your reader…alongside this one of course.
So many of you have been great to call and text this week to inquire as to the results of the weekend. As such, it seemed appropriate to provide an update here on our little corner of cyberspace.
Unfortunately, I have no good news to offer. While we did have a few folks stop by, there were no serious potential contacts made, nor were any offers made. So…we wait. We wait in faith that the Lord provides and that He is guiding this process along in His timing. We are grateful for friends and for strangers who would stand alongside of us in prayer and ask that you would continue to do so as we continue in this God-ordained adventure.
OK, so I’ve dropped the ball a bit as far as posting here in the month of October. Asking your forgiveness. It’s been a bit of a crazy month, and I let this obligation slip to the bottom of my priority list. Thanks for your understanding.
We’ve not used the blog for this reason before, but it seems appropriate at this point to ask you to join us this week in a season of intense prayer. Above is pictured la casa de Weston (how ’bout that Spanish, eh?). This has been home for our family for the past 1,484 days and has served as the center of our family-life. In that time, we’ve celebrated four Christmases, effectively doubled the size of our family from two to four, enjoyed countless evenings with friends, and have sought to make our home truly a blessing to others.
That said, we now desperately need to sell our house. While this is certainly an emotional part of our transition overseas, we’ve had it on the market for nearly seven months…through two failed offers and a multitude of ill-timed house showings. After all that, it has yet to sell. This brings me to the purpose of this post. This weekend, our real estate agents are trying an innovative new strategy called an open bid event. Essentially, we are quickly approaching several key milestone dates and one of the few “musts” in our transition sequence is that our house MUST sell. Pray that this weekend we’ll see some good traffic come through to check us out. Pray that someone will be drawn and attracted to our house and that they will make an offer which is financially feasible for us. Pray that the Lord will will increase our capacity to trust him in this process and that He would receive glory, even in the midst of a routine business transaction.
Thanks for joining with us in prayer and being great companions in this journey. I promise I’ll deliver another post in the coming days which is a little more low-maintenance on your part. In the meantime, may the favor of the Lord our God continue to rest upon us all…
I’ve spent some time in the last few weeks really reflecting on this passage from 1 Samuel 3. Just to refresh your memory (or for you iPhone subscribers who don’t have the Bible app), in this passage, we see the boy Samuel awakened from his sleep three times by a voice calling his name. He assumes that it is Eli, the High Priest and Samuel’s teacher. However, each time Eli states that it was not he who called for Samuel. On the third time, Eli instructs Samuel to respond to the calling voice by stating “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.” Samuel does so and the Lord then proceeds to very physically and tangibly unload on Samuel in a very real way…revealing His displeasure with and coming judgement on the house of Eli. If you haven’t read it in a while, I’d encourage you to do so….fascinating, yet tragic passage.
In this passage, we see an older generation (Eli) give insight to a younger generation (Samuel) on hearing God’s voice. The reality is, Eli knew exactly what was happening with Samuel because God was speaking with Samuel in the way that He used to speak to Eli. We see that a mantle has been passed….unwillingly passed. God has chosen a new voice for His prophetic Message. Because of Eli’s unwillingness to deal with the sin of his sons, in this passage, God very clearly shows the world that His blessing has been removed from Eli and very evidently given to Samuel. Not only that, but in His very first conversation with Samuel, the Lord chooses to reveal the depth of His anger and disappointment with Eli’s family and the resulting consequences from Eli’s inaction. Quite a way to receive the proverbial “mantle”…listening to the Lord completely castigate your mentor.
Once again, we see here how seriously the Lord takes sin. Sin is not to be trivialized by religious platitudes or empty promises that we’ll “do better next time.” It is not to be simply swept under the rug or justified or explained away. We as leaders are not to ignore it certainly in our own lives and families, nor in the lives of those we lead. If we succumb to the temptation to look the other way, we will find ourselves as Eli did…on the sidelines, watching the Lord’s Word come through a different generation.
Below is the text of a letter from a missionary to Spain which was published a few years ago in Christianity Today. For those of you who are following our journey, this letter (while a bit lengthy) is insightful as to the Spanish culture in which we will be attempting to live out the Gospel. You can find the original article here. Thanks to Steve for sending this over.
Since I last lived here more than four years ago, authorities have erected a transparent barrier atop the stone wall of the Bailen Street viaduct to keep the hopeless from leaping to their deaths.
Was it a Frenchman who said the more things change, the more they stay the same? The same fellows who worked the Madrid kiosks when I lived here from 1994 to 1998 continue to sell their periodicals. Madrilenos still like to dress in black. The advent of the euro notwithstanding, they still think in pesetas to make sense of the value of things. And hope, here, is still hard to find.
The U.S. missionary who pastored the church I used to attend announced, last Sunday, that he is leaving. Clinically depressed after more than 20 years of church-planting that was nothing short of miraculous in Gospel-resistant Spain, he is leaving the professional ministry altogether to run a coffeeshop back home.
He used to speak of Spain being on the verge of an eruption of the Holy Spirit. He used to encourage the church to dream big. The average Protestant church in Madrid numbers 50, and as our church was large at 150 he had a vision for growing it to several hundred. It has indeed grown, to about 200, since I left—mostly from Latin American immigration.
Among the Spaniards whom I could no longer find at the church was Miguel, who had testified of being healed of homosexual behavior. He has not reverted to former ways, as far as anyone can tell, but he has withdrawn from all church life.
Despair in Madrid takes several forms. Long-term unemployment is a big one. A friend named Juanma (a contraction of Juan Manuel) obtained a law degree but has never worked for a law firm. Still living at home in his mid-30s, he is now taking classes in computer programming.
Before and after our chess games, in which Juanma would methodically deprive my king of all hope, we often had the same discussion. He would talk of his sin-filled life in neutral terms, though sometimes as boasting. I would explain the Gospel in relation to my own sin. He would reply that he had to see God—that if God existed, he should just show himself. I would tell him that God has already manifested himself in Christ. Each time we had this exchange, Juanma would act as though he were hearing the Gospel for the first time. He wasn’t ready to absorb it.
It seems that Juanma now has joined a metaphysical group. He explained that he and an entire hall full of people witnessed the visible aura of a conference speaker, as well as her guardian angel.
Juanma has sometimes fantasized about learning English and going to England to find work. The economic hope of many Madrilenos is to leave Madrid, and this was the case for another friend, Sonia, who studied six years to become a nurse and ended up cleaning apartments. Fed up, she found work in a medical clinic in the Canary Islands. As she was one of my favorite Madrid friends—and the one who most hurt me—I left the gloomy Madrid rains to meet her on the bright island of Lanzarote. Six years ago, the previously New Age-minded Sonia had professed Christ, and we had become good friends. She then disavowed Christ, which meant cutting me out of her life.
That I was so attracted to her compounded the pain. In four days in Lanzarote we let bygones be bygones, but I did hope for the right moment to bring up our rupture. There was no use arguing about her fleeting faith, but I wanted to address an open wound.
The desired moment came on my last day on the island. On the beach I was sporting a T-shirt from Arizona that I had originally bought for her six years ago—and never got the chance to give her. I had cut out the sleeves to make it fit me, and now also some little rips appeared in the worn threads. When she presented me with a Lanzarote Emergency Rescue T-shirt she had received in the course of her work, I offered her the modified beach tank in return.
“It was originally supposed to be yours,” I said. “When you left my life, it hurt me badly. I cut the sleeves out and kept it for myself.”
She made the expected excuses, and when I pressed a little more she changed the subject. In the strident defiance typical of many Spaniards, she had no words of appeasement to offer. But she later admitted she had “deserted” me, and there was symbolism, if not significance, in her accepting the tattered tank in good humor and promising to mend it.
The primary reason missionaries to Spain last an average of just two years is axiomatic. They become discouraged over the high proportion of Spaniards who seem to come to faith only to deny it under family and other pressures. There are no mass conversions in Spain—only scattered, isolated miracles of faith. Followed, often, by scattered, isolated denials of faith.
One of these miracles of faith was Mayte (the contraction of Maria Teresa). Of indeterminate Sephardi lineage, Mayte had once recounted for me a beautiful encounter with Christ. Now meeting again, we talked for two hours before she nervously confessed that she had stopped going to church and, moreover, was exploring Judaism. She had grown weary of the evangelical church of 15 to 20 people she had faithfully served for ten years. Having just moved into the mountains north of Madrid, she said, it was no longer feasible to make it to church.
She reminded me that she was 32 years old with no immediate prospects for marriage. When I asked if she had her eye on a Jewish fellow, she only laughed and shook her head no. We commiserated about the marriage thing, and as we walked through the wet winds to the bus that would take her out of Madrid, I encouraged her to explore away at Judaism and to take a season away from the church. I was confident, I added, that Christ would complete his work in her through the process.
As her bus pulled up, I marked a cross on her forehead with my forefinger and said, chidingly, “Remember—the Messiah has already come.”
After the customary farewell kiss on each cheek, though, there was no hint of kidding in the goodbye hug. I held her tightly, desperately, clasping her head to my shoulder. As if she were my last hope for Madrid.
We received some good positive feedback from some of you guys last time we provided an update on our fundraising efforts, so we thought we’d offer another one for your reading enjoyment on this Labor Day Weekend. The past few weeks have seen some very good progress for us. Again, we are humbled and grateful for those of you who have come on board our team and in very practical and tangible ways supported the work which the Lord has called us to. That said, we are certainly feeling the urgency of an impending transition. At this point, we are 17% funded in terms of our monthly needs and 22% funded in terms of our one-time costs. At this point, those numbers include only what money is actually “in the bank,” as they say, rather than including pledges as well. Let me give perspective to some of these numbers…
In terms of our monthly costs, we now have enough money pledged to cover our family’s rent each month. That said, we’re turning our focus towards raising an additional $1,000 per month which will cover all of our insurance needs (medical, liability, etc) plus our contributions to social security. We’re praying that the Lord will bring those funds in the next three weeks, so we’d ask that you would not only consider giving, but that you would also join in prayer with us asking the Lord to provide in this way.
In terms of our one-time costs, in the Lord’s providence, we were able to raise all of the registration fees for the two training events I described in my previous post. We now are turning our eyes to travel costs. We’re looking to raise an additional $5,000 which will cover our entire family’s travel to/from the pre-launch training events and also to Costa Rica. This is a big one for us, as we’re looking forward to the opportunity to learn and to serve as a family…with the boys right there beside us. For any of you who have made multi-hour plane trips with toddlers, we appreciate your prayers in this arena too =)
As I’ve stated before, we fully recognize that without the support of the Body of Christ, we are unable to fulfill this task. We’re thankful for each of you. Thanks for taking the time to care about what’s happening in our lives. Thanks for taking the time to intercede on our behalf in your prayers to our Father. Thanks for giving sacrificially. May He be honored as we each seek to follow His Spirit’s prompting in our lives…
I’ll lead off this post by confirming that the image above is indeed a bobble-head Jesus, available for a mere $9.95, plus shipping and handling of course. The website on which I found this product touts that
“The Jesus Bobble Head is a plastic bobble-headed tribute to a remarkable man. Humbly dressed in common robes, Jesus stands 7-1/2″ tall and offers a gesture of blessing with his hand. Put him on your dashboard and he just might inspire you to exercise patience and forgiveness on the highway. Comes in a window box with fascinating Jesus quotes and history.”
When I was first exposed to the Bobblehead Messiah at a ministry convention a few years ago, I honestly wasn’t sure what the proper response was. My first response was to laugh at the thought of a very caucasian, miniature Jesus with a bobblehead no less, adorning office desks and dashboards around the world. My second thought was to cry out in repentance to the fact that we have trivialized the Lion of Judah to the point of making Him a product on the shelf for purchase.
Much has been written in recent years about the shift towards a self-satisfying, market-driven, and results-focused expression of Christianity…”Consumer Christianity” if you will. This issue is multi-faceted and has tremendous ramifications on how we as believers approach our faith. For those of us in the Western Church, every aspect of our lives is regulated by a consumer-focused, market-driven mentality. We are bombarded in every aspect of life with very focused messages designed to capture our attention, ignite our desire, and gain our loyalty, and thus our dollars. I was in a bathroom stall the other day which had ads for upcoming DVD releases on the back of the door. I know….ridiculous, right? It is no wonder that we as believers instinctively want to “market our churches” or to make Christ-followship as attractive and convenient as possible to the masses…it is innate to our society and our culture as Americans.
However, the hard reality is that biblical Christ-followship is neither attractive nor convenient. There is nothing attractive about our message that we as human beings, on our own, are “not enough” and “unable.” There is nothing uplifting about Jesus’s words in Luke 21 that we will be hated because of our association with Him. There is nothing convenient about our call to whole-heartedly follow Christ’s leading into a journey in which we must forfeit our own desires, our own plans, our own worldviews and even our own lives to become a people devoted to a Kingdom and its Sovereign. The very message of the Gospel goes against that which is natural to us and attractive to us.
However, the good news is that our message is one of Truth and Reality, and that our message is one which is empowered and propogated by the Spirit Himself. We as believers are freed from the need to “market” ourselves or to make our message attractive. Put simply, our most powerful marketing message was given to us by Jesus in John 13…”They will know you by the love you have for one another.”
So…my purpose in this writing is certainly not to decry the mistakes that we as a Church have made and continue to make. My purpose is to affirm the struggle. We as believers must continue to fight and to struggle with the temptation to satisfy the customers of our churches. We must resist the urge to communicate a Gospel which does not require transformation or commitment. We must hold firm against the inclination to present Christ-followship as a low-investment, high-return bargain.
So struggle on, my friends. For in the struggle, His strength is made perfect. It is when we cease in that struggle that we will become the Jesus bobblehead…a trinket-y, irrelevant, useless reflection of something far greater, awe-inspiring, and life-changing.
