When we set out to spend this block of time at BSSM, I imagined blogging weekly. I assumed there’d always be things to share and process in this way.

And there are. There are always things to share. But these is not time to share them! It’s an intense environment, one that is likely best unpacked over years after, so that’s how it’ll be done.

But some things need to be share. This post is one of those.

Here’s the set-up: Quickly into the New Year, I sensed a real struggle inside myself. It has a fierceness to it, that I knew I’d be a fool to march on alone. So I invited others in. The following bit is a prayer request I emailed out to friends around the map. It cites a Facebook post I made to my closest circle here. If the note-within-a-note-within-a-post format gives you a cheap Inception-special-effect, enjoy it. 🙂

Hey friends,

I sent out a prayer request to my Revival Group last night. This is the BSSM-equivalent of a Care Group (70 people, led by a staff pastor and a team of interns). But if some prayers are good, then surely more prayers are better. If you’ve got them, I’ll take them.

Below is what I wrote last night before bed. Suffice it to say that my soul just feels a unique heaviness right now, and I’m feeling like I need some form of… sigh… something to get to where I’m supposed to be. I’m trusting that God knows how to get me there. If you’d lift that prayer on my behalf, I’d be grateful.

Hey friends, may I ask you to lift me up in prayer in the days ahead?

I need… SOMETHING… in a bad way.

For all the growth that God has initiated in me this year, I just really feel like I need something major to shift in me. If 2017 is a year for breakthroughs (as Bill said), then I’m in line.

I felt like an internal mess today, and I could it feel coming for a while. If anyone at school had addressed me or touched me or approached me “just right”, I’d have burst all over them! I counted it as a tender mercy that God “protected” me from getting drawn for prophetic dance this morning — no joke! Our RG would have buried a member in that moment.

To be blunt, I just feel very needy right now, and that seems to drive me quickly to a place of sadness. I’m not relating freely to God right now, and part of me just wants to stew in that for a bit. I need a softening and a sensitivity and a sweetness to return in fresh ways.

I do believe that God has a great call upon my life, but I’m feeling as though He needs to do major renovations on me for that to move forward. I felt hopeful that this was the year for such work, but now I’m wasting brain cells stressing over how far I haven’t come. Disappointment mixes with doubt, stirs in fear, and blends with insecurity to form a brutal cocktail that I’m sipping right now.

Sigh.

For tonight, I’ve shed my tears and steamed my shower, and I’m headed to bed early, convinced that God will have better access to me when I’m unconscious on this particular day.

I’m not seeking pity. I’m not even really seeking counsel. Revival Group is such a strange phenomenon. Most of us know little of each other’s lives, yet we know much at the same time. We’re deeply acquainted strangers, some of us. But the Spirit that’s crafting those special connections sets us up to call on one another and to carry one another. And if you’re game to carry me for a time, then I’d be grateful if you approached the Father on my behalf.

I have a tonne of admiration and care for all of you. Thanks for being who you are and for offering yourselves to the Lord and the rest of us.

A week later, I felt compelled to provide an update as a lot had happened. Several friends commented on how valuable they felt it was to share the inner workings of our spiritual lives more freely with one another and on how encouraging it is to hear testimonies of God at work in His people. I hope this post might achieve both of those.

Here is the next email-citing-Facebook-post that I sent out:

Hi all,

Exactly one week ago, I requested prayer from each of you. An update is in order. (The following is a message I posted to my BSSM Revival Group, and am tweaking slightly for you.)

On the heels of that message, I was feeling fairly desperate for God to respond to an undefined-but-intense sense of need. I attempted to push into this through all the steps I could think of:

• I pulled a number of home-friends in for prayer support, sharing a similar update with them through email.
• Shannon sent me on a private two-day retreat last weekend.
• One of my major “retreat tasks” was revisiting and cataloging every prophetic word (these were given when people had prayerfully listened to they believed God wanted them to share with me) I had record of, back to 2014.
• I did a lot of soaking (restful and still worship/prayer/meditation) and strumming.
• I fasted for an “undefined period”, that ended up defining itself as three days.
• I tried “Processing with Holy Spirit”, as Leslie Crandall described back on December 5.
• I pressed into corporate worship settings with more intensity and hunger.
• I openly received smiles, touches, hugs, comments, prayers from any kind people handing them out.
• I started going to bed earlier and began a swimming-for-exercise routine every second morning — just did my 4th today, also I started detoxing my body with a Science Based Green Detox. (Sometimes we need supernatural things, but some pretty-natural things can help too. 🙂 )

Within days, I sensed God shifting things inside of me. But the moves were subtle, nothing like the seismic shift I was seeking. To clarify, I’m typically quite tempered in my expectations. I struggle to dream wildly, and my “bold prayers” are a work in progress. That said, I had a very real sense of this being a season of major transition. I have no past history with “numbers stuff”, but I have had a months-long, to-the-point-of-ridiculous run of seeing sequences of ones on clocks and signs and what-not. Some view these digits as symbolic of transitions and shifts. That is intriguing, but those “heavenly algorithms” only confirmed what I already knew from charting my life-story to heeding the stirrings in my heart: “Lord, I believe You are up to something bigger than usual inside of me. And I really need it to happen.”

As I said, the first shifts were subtle, almost unnoticeable:

• A sliver more breathing room for my spirit, enough to not die. 🙂
• A sense of God’s responsiveness as I dialoged with Him with in prayer. (I kid you not: Leslie’s lesson on “Processing with Holy Spirit” will be one of my great takeaways of this year. That has the potential to change a lot for me, from today until my 120th birthday. After that, it probably won’t change anything anymore. 😉 )
• Gentle reminders of things I once believed (even weakly), related to prophetic words given in years past and the perceptions I had in those days of what God was up to in my life.

As I write these, I realize these might sound big. But they didn’t feel big. At least, not nearly as big as I was looking for. But enough for the moment.

On the first night of my retreat, a friend from home texted me. (You know who you are!) This is a fellow younger than myself, whose family visited us in Redding over Christmas break. He and his wife are very supportive of us being here and perhaps on a similar path, though fewer steps along. Impressive to me, he determined to ask God for a message to share with me — a prophetic word. This self-confessed “raw rookie” received this as he prayed for me:

“I saw someone climbing a mountain, someone summiting a massive mountain in a moment of glory and triumph. Then I was reminded very clearly that great moments like that do not happen without incredible amounts of time, training, work, and even pain. I saw images of someone struggling to climb a particularly difficult stretch of that mountain.”

He closed by timidly hoping there might be some bit of encouragement in the image and left it at that. In honesty, I found strength in the fact that he cared enough about me to push beyond his comfort zone and share. The image was meaningful as well, though I confess that prophetic words have seldom impacted me as much as they seem to impact others. And that brings up this next bit.

On the second night of my retreat, Shannon and I exchanged a few text messages. She challenged me on the hearing that should be given to prophetic words. For her, these forms of encouragement wield great weight, like nothing less than personalized-from-God, perfect-for-the-moment, fitted-just-for-her messages of strength and inspiration. I took her words to heart as best I could. And I went to bed.

Weekend ended, school resumed. Monday rolled past.

On Tuesday, one of our fine Revival Group members (You know who you are too!) approached me with a hug and an inquiry of how I was doing. In the course of listening to me, he said:

“You know, as I’m looking at you, I just had this picture of a very large mountain.”

The guy who hasn’t always given much weight to prophetic words – yeah, that guy was pretty attentive at that moment. Just saying.

My friend continued, “This very large mountain was lit on its upper portion, but the bottom portion was darker. The whole mountain was being hit with a snowstorm, and I could see a man slowly inching his way up the mountain. Every step he took was in faith, and I felt as though the Lord was saying that you have been on the bottom portion of the mountain, but you are inching your way toward the lit portion. You’re on a great journey of encountering the Lord in every season and section of life. I also felt like the snow was like fear, but you only need a perspective shift. The snow was actually the Lord releasing delight over you, and He is readying you to experience His glory in new ways.”

That marked a corner in my past week.

It may well be a larger-scale corner than that.

And then today — 1/11 on the calendar. Leslie Crandall — yeah, that same one — was our guest leader in Revival Group. As she gave instructions for our very loosely structured time, I wondered how I would proceed. What would Holy Spirit prompt me to do? I sat in my seat, with eyes closed, for quite some time. I debated with myself whether I was sitting there because that was the easy and safe thing to do, or whether I was sitting there because He wanted me to sit there. I determined it was His idea. So I sat. I became unusually attuned to my body and to the fact that my breathing was quite shallow. I sensed His prompting to deepen my breathes as much as possible. Each breath continued to feel deeper than the previous one. I imagined my lungs stretching. In these moments, my mind reflected on the two mountain images given to me by faithful brothers, and “a moment” developed. It was one of those moments one best not forget.

It was as if God were saying, “I am increasing your capacity. I am strengthening your feet and improving your balance and lengthening your stride and enlarging your lungs. In keeping me seated, it was as if God were saying, “You have what you need right where you are. You need not hunt it down. But be certain that you breathe as deeply as possible from all you are given.”

Then some moments later, I felt prompted to complete my journal entry sitting in the middle of the room. I believe this act was God’s way of saying, “When you are breathing deeply of all that I provide, don’t breathe alone. Position yourself in the middle of other God-seekers, give and take together, and resist every devil-driven urge to hide. Men like Moses and Gideon and Joshua were not made to hide. You are not made to hide either. So step with strength, breathe in deeply, and move with confident attentiveness to the One who is all you need.”

If spiritual mathematics exist, I have no idea of the exchange rate between units of prayer and units of divine response. But this post is meant to serve as both a testimony to God’s faithfulness and a note of gratitude for every ounce of prayer you devoted to me in the past week.

Thank you, Father. And thank you, friends.

And thank you, friends for reading.

I’d love to interact with you through the comments section of this blog or the Facebook/Twitter link that led you here. 

Let me close like this…

In Acts 17:27, Paul sketched his understanding of why God does much of what He does:

“God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”

Whatever you’re needing, reach out for Him in every way you know how. Pull others in, and lay yourself open before Him. And believe, even when it’s hard, the truth that He is not far from any one of us. 

And He is not far from you.

“Sharpen your blade, Lord.”

Recently in the flow of worship, that line of prayer passed through my lips.

It has not been my intention to let so much time pass between blog posts. I have an ever-growing list of “blog ideas” accumulating as our time at BSSM continues. But forming wonderings into words — as much as I love the task — I’ve struggled to find the time. Allow me a few lines before bed swallows me up.

Hebrews 4:12 describes a wild weapon of God’s:

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

At the risk of causing confusion, allow me to say: “Word of God” includes, but is not limited to, the leather-bound Scripture book that many of us hold dear. That’s not some spooky way of saying the Bible is insufficient or incomplete. It’s simply an acknowledgment that the thoughts of a infinite Being don’t squeeze well into even a couple thousand tissue-thin pages. What we’ve heard from Him is certainly enough, but it is equally certainly not-exhaustive.

But the message of Hebrews 4:12 is this: Everything you do hear from Him has a point.

Quite literally.

When God interfaces with us, He comes for real.

People have a nifty knack for using much verbiage to unveil little value. The People-Maker: He’s not nearly so nifty or knacky. Some preachers receive props from listeners shouting, “That’s a good word.” You hear from God, and you’re apt to shake your stabbed hand and suck the blood of your fingers. You may need a friend with a handkerchief.

Yahweh’s words carried creative power in Genesis. He formed and filled the cosmos by what He said. So you can bet that when we construct — even unwittingly — rags of rebellion or coverings of callousness, He calls the Spirit to the sharpening stone to prepare His Sword. And when the Holy Assassin appears and runs His blade through your supposed substance, it’s both astonishing and awesome to discover: You are filling up as you are bleeding out.

My daughters love to put band-aids on their “owies”. I’ve tried to explain that their role is mostly for covering cuts, to keep germs out and blood in. But my girls think they are far more magical! They imagine these brown (Disney characters if we’re splurging) sticky strips to undo bruises, soothe hurt feelings, and make rainbows rise in the sky. So we stick them on, in an effort to bring comfort beyond their capacity. And little girls smile.

Allow me to say that the BSSM school-supply list did not mention nearly enough band-aids. Friends from home — friends that genuinely care — often ask quite sincerely, “So how’s BSSM?” I’ve yet to possess enough nerve to reply, “It’s a bloodbath.” But I could. Because it is.

More than deadly-sharp, God’s word is deadly-accurate. Hebrews 4:12 says so. The blade lives, for crying out loud! It moves! It bends and angles and dives and drives. It contorts and connives and schemes and sees. No random wounds by this weapon. It wedges itself into the crevices it discovers under our less-obscuring-than-we-imagined layers. Once in place, it hammers and heaves until the breaking point arrives.  There is no thought or attitude or motivation that is immune. He’s coming in — all the way in. The slicing is part of the saving. The bleeding blends with the birthing.

The laceration’s
An invitation
To re-creation.

And when you have felt life flow in through your wounds, then it shocks you not, to hear your lips praying, “Sharpen your blade, Lord.”

I am daring to dream (make that, resolving as fact) that this is my final “BSSM backstory post”. Back on August 28, I began a series attempting to provide a somewhat quality reply to the question, “So how did you guys end up at Bethel?” This post will conclude my attempt at summing up the events of nearly 2500 days into nine blog entries. Nice and tidy, just like it happened. Not! If you missed the first eight, those will be helpful. If you’re all caught up, the end is near. 🙂

Thus far, I’ve tried to follow the timeline, providing dates whenever I could. I hoped this would help folks to have a sense of how very slowly much of this journey unfolded. We often joke that we are “miles from spontaneous”, and for chunks of life that has certainly seemed true. However, friends have pointed out to us that perhaps we are more spontaneous than we let on. Either way, our path to this point has involved many one-degree turns and inches-at-a-time, with the occasional earthquake to shift things faster!

Let this post be a change-up. Time blurred somewhat in these final steps toward coming to Bethel, with many thoughts and events overlapping. Rather than a chronological flow, let me highlight a three-strand braid. As my daughters can attest, my hair-styling capacity is limited to ponytails and braids. Today you get a braid. And as they sometimes remind one another, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” 🙂

Three strands: Here we go…

FEARING GAPS

In the years 2000-2003, my wife and I lived in Regina. She worked her first RN job, and I completed a seminary degree. During that span, Glen Elm Church of Christ was our faith community. That decision was a no-brainer due to numerous pre-existing friendships and a notable level of familiarity with that congregation. Our time there was positive and special to the extent that it seemed natural to look into a post-seminary future and wonder if an opportunity for employment in that setting might ever arise. It seemed the fit might be suitable, but I don’t recall obsessing over the idea. Life can take a lot of turns, and I didn’t feel a need to fret over what the future may or may not hold. God had led well to that point; I trusted He’d continue.

After three years of teaching English overseas (2003-2006), however, I confess that it made me smile when our return home coincided perfectly with Glen Elm’s search for staff. Ten years of work there has done nothing but increase our love for this church. It is home in so many ways. We have high appreciation for the leadership of this church, both those who hold “official positions” and those who simply and quietly lead because that is who they are. It’s a place of life, great for our girls, and home to some special friends too. There are plenty of ways in which we still need to develop, and we have as many issues and quirks as any church. But I’m consistently pleased to make my home in this setting. That said, I confess to a time of wondering how our growing hunger for more knowledge and experience of the Holy Spirit would be received by those around us. Let me be clear: One of the things I most appreciate about my church is their level of openness. That’s one of the reasons why even as a student, I imagined this place as a potentially suitable place to work. Much of this openness was cultivated by way-before-me leadership, who laboured hard to focus heavily enough on God’s grace that it might cast cracks into the “false narrow way” of legalism that some of us held quite dearly. Thanks to such faithful work, I have always felt quite free to explore any facet of faith and to question any long-held assumption so long as it was done with careful thought and gracious touch. It’s a pleasure of a place to preach!

Yet now I was feeling shy.

Much of what God was doing in my life was so gut-level. It was hard to know how to share. I pressed myself to keep my Shepherds (our name for “Elders”) in the loop, but I struggled to know how to do so with the “average member” of my congregation. In the meantime, nothing was standing still. As the previous eight posts would affirm, both Shannon and I were in a season where we often marvelled to one another: “God is doing more in us and to us in this couple years than in the 35 years before!” And that pace was yanking up some of our roots: Too many questions, too much recalculating, too much shifting in our minds and hearts.

And that raised a fear in me.

It’s one thing to present provocative pulpit pieces. (Overkill on an alliteration: Check.) It’s another to publicly speak of your own evolving theology, one that you have little comfort with even in the moment. Some of this was self-centred and small: I don’t wish to look weird. But now I was claiming that the Lord was touching my life in ways that, not so long before, I’d have stuck the “Weird” label on myself! My childhood faith was impacted by a heritage with strands of skepticism and cynicism toward those who weren’t like us. Of any exploration or curiosity that went “too far”, one might hear:

• “That sounds a bit Baptist to me.”
• “We don’t do that because the Catholics do.”
• “You’re starting to sound like a Calvinist.”
• “Don’t go getting all Pentecostal on us.”

However, part of this wasn’t entirely self-centred. I don’t have that luxury. None of us do. The things we do and say impact others. In many moments, I was swept up in gratitude that God seemed to be birthing something so new and alive in me. I was being reborn; it felt a lot like John 3. But in other moments, I let fear become quite loud. It was a fear over an imagined scenario. It was a feeling of tension. It wasn’t tension with other people. It was all inside myself. Perhaps it was imagined. Maybe it was real but nobody around me ever stated. Perhaps it was all me. Whatever the case, I recall an image in my mind of two lines running parallel to one another. I imagined these as the steel rails of a train track. One represented the spiritual-journey-trajectory of a church; the other represented the spiritual-journey-trajectory of a pastor. To be wild and crazy, let’s name them “Glen Elm” and “Jason”. 🙂

I imagined that perhaps great harmony must exist within a church where the spiritual trajectory of the congregation runs perfectly parallel to the spiritual trajectory of its pastor. This would seem to result in smooth and friction-free travel, like a railcar cruising down the track. However, what happens if the trajectories aren’t the same, if one of those rails pivots by even one degree? What about greater angles?

In my head, the railway image now morphed. No longer a train track strapped to the ground, it was now a simple angle, with an elastic band wrapped around both arms. Near the vertex, the tension on the stretched band is minimal. It’s not as though I knew the varied spiritual journeys taking place within our church family, but it felt easy-to-imagine that what was happening in our lives might not be par for everybody’s course at the time. This had no tone of superiority or “feeling special”. It was just that those miles of awakening and blessing and growth and confusion and hunger had felt so different from anything we’d ever felt before that it seemed reasonable to imagine that “our beam” might no longer be as parallel to our church family’s as it had been before (if it ever had been). It pleased me that there existed sufficient respect for and rapport with my Shepherds to be able to voice these feelings, but it didn’t stop me from wondering: “Is tension building as this elastic stretches? If so, how are we doing to navigate that, Lord?”

Around this time, we began to discover that a number of others within our circles of friends were also sensing God’s nearness and goodness and power in new ways. People were seeking God with renewed desire, and there was a growing prayer for refreshing and revival. A certain comfort arose as trusted friends pointed out: “To seek Holy Spirit is to seek Jesus and to seek Father. There’s no competition in the Godhead.” This truth addressed a fear that I sense lives in some corners: It’s imagined that greater emphasis on Holy Spirit might somehow draw one astray from “sound teaching”, despite Jesus’ joyful conviction that Holy Spirit would serve as our personalized Guide “into all truth”. My fearful side accepted yet another nudge of encouragement. “More of You please” is a good prayer, and when Father, Son, and Holy Spirit hear it prayed by people, they all respond in perfect partnership. I needed to pray that more boldly. I still do.

But feelings are funny things, and even with those convictions forming in me, my fearful side (it’s persistent, isn’t it?!) fretted. Neither Shannon and I had any desire for our growing-but-hard-to-define hunger for more of Holy Spirit to be troubling or troublesome to others. We don’t enjoy heightening tension. At the same time, we knew full well that “going back” would never be an option. We could not simply re-turn our beam to a previous setting. One cannot un-discover or un-learn or un-experience God’s work in our lives. One way or another, He was beckoning us. Onward, even with blurred eyes, was the only option.

IMMERSION

“Some things are caught, not taught.”

I don’t know where that saying originated or what it was describing. But somewhere along the road of hungering for Holy Spirit, being personally impacted by faithful people exercising His gifts, and having firsthand experiences with healing and dramatically answered prayers, it became impossible to deny: I don’t think books (which I love) can instruct me on all that’s going on.

We know this implicitly about all sorts of things. Want to really learn a language? I’ll bet the word “immersion” gets considered. Our years in China arose largely because we’d been so touched and impacted by short-term international travel that we determined, “More is likely better. Let’s go long enough for an immersion experience.”

Even our imagery of Christian conversion confirms this belief. The baptism act involves being plunged underwater so that every dry surface becomes wet. That’s what immersion does. It touches everything in a way that it moves from state to another. And that phrase we use at baptism, you know the one? “Now I baptize you in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” It’s not merely the proper pronouncement, as if that line of lingo makes the moment acceptable by God’s rigorous liturgical standards. Rather, it accurately describes what is to take place at conversion. To speak of the names of Father, Son, Holy Spirit is to speak of the realities of the Godhead. The ways of the heavenly Kingdom are foreign and nonsensical to fallen folks. That’s why Paul prays (in Ephesians 3) that those believers might come to know the unknowable love of God. How does one go about knowing the reality that it beyond knowing?! It requires being soaked (let’s say “drowned”) in a beyond-us world about which we had only clues beforehand. At baptism, we position ourselves to be soaked by God. We invite Him to, for the rest of our lives, cover us with this stunning new reality found in the fullness of Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

This is an astounding thought, probably wasted on a blog post! But here’s my point: Baptism is so much more than a point of repentant decision that from this moment forward, we will try to do better. God’s Kingdom is so unlike the ones we try to construct that while it can be taught about (Jesus used a lot of parables in this effort), there is no amount of great instructing that can deliver us to a breakthrough point. That requires supernatural involvement, and it most certainly involves more than ideas passing into a brain.

“Some things are caught, not taught.”

And somewhere in the midst of grabbing every chain-link we could reach, that line felt oh-so-true. God was faithfully stretching us and challenging us and touching us, but we recognized a growing desire to be plunged in more aggressively than any smattering of books and podcasts and conferences were going to provide. And we began to quietly wonder, “What would an immersion experience look like for us?” That question alone was sort of fun but fully hypothetical. The fun part led me to a lot of late-night Googling and inquiring of friends outside my usual circle of thoughts. We determined that any such experience — strictly an imaginary thing at this point — would have to meet three requirements:

1. It would have to be an environment that took both Word and Spirit seriously.
2. It would have to be a program or experience that both of us could enrol in together.
3. It would have to work for a family with small children.

The real question — but not real enough to stop my fun and fascinating Googling — Where/When/How would this ever fit into our lives?

SABBATICAL

Several years ago, a one-word item appeared on one of our Shepherds’ Meeting agendas: Sabbatical. One of our Shepherds had visited with church leaders from other settings and had become curious about this concept, quite unfamiliar to our circle of churches. The conversations he had participated in had described instances where pastors had resigned or burned out or taken extended leaves from their churches. So he came to the meeting with a question: Is this something we should consider down the road? As one might expect, I was grateful for the care these thoughts communicated. But I quickly confirmed that I was currently in a season of “good health”. However, I had just participated in a recent class where Sabbatical practices had been discussed, and I agreed that the topic might have value down the road. We tabled the topic as one of those way-down the-road, if-we-ever-get-to-it items. And life went on.

As 2015 moved along, our private imaginings about an “immersion experience” had ramped up enough that I had researched various programs around and beyond North America. This list quickly crystallized into six main options:

• Catch the Fire (Toronto,ON)
• Global Awakening (Mechanicsburg, PA)
• International House of Prayer (Kansas City,MO)
• Bethel Church (Redding,CA)
• Iris Ministries (Bases all over the world)
• Youth With a Mission (Bases all over the world)

There was still no sense of how/when/if we would ever actually change the label on this pot of possibilities from “dream” to “plan”. But we were increasingly convinced that sometime and somewhere, that might happen. And if we didn’t make that so, we felt confident we’d regret it in our grey and wrinkled years.

Since its first mention and tabling, “Sabbatical” was mentioned here and there, but it always seemed easy to table again. I’m not pointing at others when I say that; I found it easy to table. There wasn’t really anything to talk about. I can be a touch slow in a lot of ways, so while you can likely see where this is going and how the dots connect, I wasn’t seeing it in real-time. Church of Christ preachers don’t go to Bethel Church for Sabbaticals. They don’t apply to schools with the word “Supernatural” woven into their names. And if they do, they don’t do so with backing or blessing from those above them and those beside them.

Unless they do.

By 2015, discussion of Sabbatical possibilities had gained slight traction. I confessed that we had some ideas quietly brewing, and the Shepherds were interested to hear more. By this point, we’d narrowed the list above to two, and we determined to do a scouting trip to BSSM. We’d sit in on classes, visit with some current students (particularly with those who had families here), and get a better feel for this possibility. By August, we were submitting a proposal requested by the Shepherds, outlining how we might wish to use a Sabbatical opportunity and what value we imagined it would have for both us and the church. The following months involved multiple layers of discussion and disclosure, looks at logistics, and conversations followed by concerns followed by more conversations. This may come as a shock to you: Googling Bethel Church gets you a lot of hits! And their tones and takes on this place are all over the board. Some are certain this is some version of “heaven on earth”; others are sure it’s a creepy cult. I knew enough to call it “a well that pretty consistently serves good water”. We were encouraged to seek input from other leaders inside and outside of our fellowship of churches, to invite input. This process was mostly affirming and positive, and that helped up the level of comfort that others around us felt about this once-unthinkable plan. The go-ahead to make plans was given, and the year ahead was spent discussing logistics and making plans on many fronts, by many folks.

And so in August 2016 (now two months ago), our church very lovingly and very graciously sent us on our way south to this place that adequately fits the criteria we’d set out long before:

1. Both Word and Spirit are taken seriously.
2. Both Shannon and I are in the one-year program, as classmates. 🙂
3. This setting is providing a special and formative experience for our three daughters too.

I’ve got to go back a few sentences.

We were actually astounded at the level of care we felt from our church, ahead of our departure. I have no doubt that there are likely some who sent us with reservation. Some perhaps begrudgingly. Some perhaps downright disapprovingly. But if such feelings existed, they were entirely overshadowed by generous expressions of kindness. It’s a real testament to the gracious spirit that lives in this group, and I have a strong conviction that God will pour that back upon them in more ways than they might venture to guess. I don’t even mean: A better version of Jason & Shannon will return home next summer, and the church will benefit from that. I hope that happens too. What I mean is more invisible and harder to flow-chart. I think God is honourable. And He loves to bestow honour on those who sow into others with generosity, and on those who seek Him even when fear or reservation exist, and on those who love deeply and determinedly. And the folks of Glen Elm are doing all those; our family certainly feels it.

And that is where this “back story” is ending.

Has my blog left gaps in this six-plus year journey? Oh yes.

Am I going to keep rolling these posts? Not about the past. There’s new stuff to write about… almost every day some weeks!

Am I open to questions? Sure.

More than anything, I hope these posts have provided some background for those who’ve curiously wondered, “How did they end up there?” Perhaps far beyond two little people named Jason and Shannon, these posts might also have highlighted how amazing it is to be loved and led by God! He has plans for everyone, and they are life-filled and love-filled plans, often quite different from the ones we’d sketch if He gave us the whiteboard.

So He doesn’t.

He just beckons.

He pays for us and prays for us and stays with us. He seeks to heal us so that we might better steward everything He shares with us. And then He just treats us with goodness and kindness and graciousness so pronounced at times that we may feel embarrassed that anyone — let alone Anyone with a capital “A” — might love such a ridiculous someone so ridiculously!

And He loves you that way.

And lo and behold, I’m learning to believe that He loves me that way too.

Much grace and peace to you, friends and guests alike.

By mid-2013, both Shannon and I had been bowled over by surprising and unnervingly personal touches of God upon our lives. Our hearts felt more alive than they ever had, and His nearness and goodness and real-ness had never been so clear. Those stories have been told in the past several posts in case you need to go back to catch up.

Despite this flood of overwhelming goodness, the sense of “overwhelming” was hard to live with. It felt as though the ground was shifting. And it’s hard to stand up or navigate a path when your roots feel like they’re rattling.

So around that time, a prayer formed in us. I’m not sure it ever possessed specific language, but it was built around an image of chain links. Whenever I prayed it, it came out something like this:

“Lord, we’re so thankful for all You’re doing in us right now. We so want to follow You wherever You’re headed, but we’re a bit unnerved and quite uncertain of how to move forward. What do we do? Where to next? We’ll follow You anywhere, but You need to lead us with gentleness and patience. If You will faithfully feed us one link of chain at a time, we will keep tugging on it to pursue this ‘something’ that You’ve undeniably begun.”

It wasn’t flashy, and it felt quite weak. But we prayed that prayer as openly and receptively as we knew how. What we meant by “chain links” was that we would live as alertly as we could to resources or relationships that God might wish to expose us to.

• Book to read? We’re in it.
• Conference to attend? We’re at it.
• Song or sermon or podcast to hear? We’re on it.
• New relationship to enter? We’re entering.
• Old relationship to deepen? We’re going.
• Dream in our head? Hurt in our heart? Word from a stranger? We’re tuned in.

Sometime after I began weakly praying this prayer, I attended a preaching conference in Texas. There I was introduced to a fellow, now a friend, who had thrown himself into pursuing the person and power of Holy Spirit years earlier. We met, and I shared a thumbnail of my story. When I sought his advice, he simply stated:

“If you want to learn things you’ve never learned before, you’ll need to go places you’ve never gone and try things you’ve never tried and listen to voices you’ve never listened to before. And you should do all those things with no sense of fear.”

That last line stood out to my naturally-cautious self. I’d love to be more of a risk taker, but it is certainly not my default setting. But that line began yet another experience of conviction that might be summed up like this:

Why, Jason, do you allow fear to wield so much power within your pursuit of God? The Holy Spirit is described by Jesus as the Spirit of Truth, given to guide us into all truth. Unwittingly, you revere the powers of darkness far too highly. Sure the devil is a liar who works to deceive and distort. But why would you ever imagine that the devil would be more capable at his job than the Holy Spirit might be at His? In whom are you placing your faith anyway? Stop being led by fear, and push out.

That single sentence — “do this things without fear” — amplified our prayers. My hands were ready. I would grasp on to anything that even remotely resembled a link of chain. I was bound to grab some duds. There was always risk of deception or mis-emphasis or whatever. So be it. This whole trek was build upon God’s grace from the start. Why not lean even more heavily on Him?

So that’s what we tried to do.

And God responded.

In fact, He responded so much that I can’t possibly document all the links we grabbed along the way. But perhaps these four stand out for one reason or another.

Darren Wilson DVDs

In the final months of 2012, another season began for our church hockey team. This is my annual habit to confirm that I’m getting slower and stiffer every single year! In the dressing room one week, a teammate handed me a DVD and said, “Hey Jason. I don’t know for sure, but you might enjoy this. Let me know what you think.”

He handed me a film called “Finger of God”. It didn’t look like much. Little did I know that it was about to provide me with a bucket of chain links that I hadn’t even begun praying for yet. The back read like this:

Hundreds raised from the dead. Manna appearing in the Pentagon. Gemstones falling from the sky. Teenagers healing perfect strangers on the street. This isn’t old time religion. This is a new beginning. A spiritual revolution. This is the Finger of God.

Prepare to go on a dizzying journey around the world – from the streets of Northern California to the mud huts of Africa; from the underground church in China to the Gypsies in Eastern Europe – you will be challenged and encouraged by the extraordinary things God is doing in our world today. Born out of filmmaker Darren Wilson’s personal journey of two years and hundreds of hours of footage, Finger of God will show you a world you never knew existed. A world of hope and courage. A world where God’s fingerprints are found in the unlikeliest of places.

I breathed out a smirk. Sounded interesting. And mostly insane.

Since that time, I have recommended this film (and its follow-up pieces) to numerous folks. Some of my circle and some of my church have even indulged me by watching and discussing them together. But even to this day, I always make the recommendation with this disclaimer:

“When I started this film for the first time, I hated it. In fact, the first 20 minutes made me downright mad, and I seriously questioned why my hockey buddy thought that I would enjoy this in any way whatsoever. But if you can grit your teeth until the 20-minute mark, the film will turn a corner and you may well find something special.”

I have now seen five films produced by Darren Wilson (Wanderlust Productions) and of read one of his books as well. Perhaps one of the big reasons his work resonates with me is that he and I seem similarly wired. Within his films, he frequently poses the question that’s in my head, and he seems sincerely intent on maintaining both a healthy skepticism and an appropriate openness. The back story on these films go something like this.

Somewhere around 2005, Darren Wilson was teaching film in a small college. His real desire was to write screenplays, but by his mid-30s, he was experiencing such a serious battle with writer’s block that he feared his creativity had already run out. During this time, his wife and her family were occasionally traveling to what Darren described as “psycho Christian conferences” in weird places like Redding and Kansas City and Toronto. They always came back pumped and excited about the Kingdom of God, but he had no interest at all to accompany them. He describes his faith at the time as “generally apathetic”. Griping to his wife one day about his lack of film ideas, she unintentionally grated on him by gently suggesting that he should pray about it: “Ask God for an idea.”. The advice made him angry, and he proceeded to stay up late to see if he couldn’t grind some ideas out of his weary mind. Hours later, more frustrated than ever, he went to bed. Lying restlessly beside his sleeping wife, he offered what he describes as an absolutely awful and faithless prayer. From a place of cynicism and anger, he tossed out these words: “Well, if You’ve got something, I guess I’d take it.”

Within minutes, Darren’s mind exploded with enough ideas to drive him back to the kitchen table to get them recorded. The first of those ideas was to create something of a documentary about the weirdest and wackiest claims he was hearing from these psycho-Christian gatherings. Nothing in his heart had changed. He entered this project with a heavy dose of unbelief and a strong desire to shatter some of the myths being perpetuated by “weak-minded people”. That really describes the first 20 minutes of his film. But the corner that viewers feel as they watch “Finger of God” signifies a monumental turn that Darren must have felt as his network of conversations and experiences developed in surprising ways.

The greatest value that I received from these films was the way they became living bibliographies for me. Remember that I was in a season of prayer and had promised God that I would grab anything that looked like a link of chain. So I watched these interview-filled documentaries with pen and paper in hand. Anyone who sounded remotely trustworthy went on one list. Anyone who sounded wackier than I could handle went on a different list. That first list became quite precious to me, and countless evenings were spent online reading biographies or studying articles or watching footage featuring these seemingly trustworthy strangers. This is where Bethel Church first came up on our horizon. Until then, we (like many) had only known them for their worship music. Now several members of their staff were named on my list, including Bill Johnson (mentioned in THIS POST). To a list that had already included folks like Jack Deere and Gordon Fee and Chad Norris, I was now adding names like Randy Clark, Rolland & Heidi Baker, Robbie Dawkins, Greg Boyd, Will Hart, and more.

The Spirit of Truth was undeniably up to more than I had been aware of, and through many of His people — both long-time friends and now new acquaintances, He was leading the way.

Listening Prayer

Some portion of me had always believed that prayer had to be more than tossing request-heavy lists heavenward. Intuitively, I had long sensed that prayer was intended to be two-way communication. Even still, I don’t remember giving much consideration to the listening dimension of prayer. Along that line, the spiritual directors I mentioned in an EARLIER POST both placed emphasis on “centring prayer”, at practice of tuning in to the God that around and inside His children. A friend directed us to a book by Brad Jersak, titled “Can You Hear Me”?  The book was so engaging and so well-crafted to meet us where we were, that our church actually hosted Brad for a weekend to teach on that very subject. How exciting it was to see so many people from “our crowd” also hungering for dynamic connection with the Father! (Recordings from those sessions may still be posted on our church website if you wish to tune in.)

For what it’s worth, I still struggle greatly with this practice. I believe in it. I try to do it, though not with nearly the consistency it deserves. But when I do, I wage some common battles in my head.

• If I “get something”, is that me? Is that Him?
• If I “get nothing”, is that my fault? Is that His?

These questions, and others like them, can quickly deliver me to a place of pressure to perform, when listening is an act of a completely different nature. It’s receptive. It’s attentive. But it is not coercive, and it doesn’t involve forcing anything. The portions of me which love completing tasks by exerting effort and which clamour for control struggle with listening prayer. It requires more quiet than quickness, more patience than pushing.

It’s a gentle time of relating and waiting.
If that’s grating, my heart is stating,
That it needs to do this more.

And mine does.

Travels

The summer of 2013 marked our 15^th wedding anniversary. Shannon had always wanted to visit the giant redwood trees, so I crafted a week-long, child-free getaway to northern California. We did all the things one might expect of us: Flew into San Francisco, visited Alcatraz, caught a Jays’ game in Oakland, then drove north to enjoy the majesty of the redwood forests. Staying within hours of Redding, we determined to loop through just long enough to catch some of the weekend happenings at Bethel Church. That was our first visual on this place, though any thoughts of someday living here were less than wisps of smoke at the time. It was a just a vacation, and a fun one at that.

By January 2014, we were headed the other direction. A biographical documentary was streaming online, about an American missionary named Heidi Baker. Google her. She’s an astounding woman, and you may struggle to believe some of what you read. That’s okay. I hold her highly, and I still struggle to know exactly how to take her. Well, the film that evening (titled “Compelled by Love”) was so engaging that it started me wondering where one would ever hear this woman speak. An online search confirmed that she almost never came to North America. But she’d be in Toronto in two weeks! Part of me loves surprising Shannon with outings or trips. And I knew that this trip would blow her away! But I also knew it was impossible. Our life at that point had no space for spontaneity: We had three small children and four mental health patients that depended upon us. Throw in costs and logistics, and there was no way.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea. What would it hurt to put out some feelers?

Text messages to friends and family offered childcare and respite possibilities. Air miles sitting unused reduced costs significantly. Tickets were still available for the event itself. Long story short: Two folks lacking spontaneity did surprisingly well!

And we got surprised too.

It turns out that Heidi Baker was just one of many speakers at a large multi-day conference, celebrating the 20^th Anniversary of the Toronto Blessing. You know, just the type of place you’d expect a small-town Church of Christ boy to take his sweetheart for a date. 🙂

In case the term “Toronto Blessing” is unfamiliar, here’s a quick catch-up:

Leading up to 1994, a small church of around 120 people, near the Toronto Airport, had been in an extended period of prayer for renewal and revival. They wanted God to “do something”. In January of that year, they invited a guest speaker named Randy Clark to lead some services for them. And God “did something”. People started being healed. Powerful conversions began taking place. Hearts were being awakened, relationships were being restored, addictions were being broken. It was stunning and amazing. And strange.

Meetings continued nightly for many months, with crowds gathering hours before and lingering hours after. Word spread, and visitors soon began showing up from all over the globe. To many, it was as if God was “touching down” blocks away from the Toronto Airport, and His landing was bringing abundant life. To many others, it was not so clear.

I first heard of the “Toronto Blessing” during Bible College (1995-98). One teacher would present it as a case study of sorts whenever we discussed the Holy Spirit. In those years, the Christian community was in heated debate over how to interpret (and respond to) the stories coming out of Toronto. Of course, people loved the tales of redemption and restoration. But those weren’t the stories getting the headlines. The limelight was being taken by weirder accounts: Wild laughter, people falling, noises of barking and roaring and more. And the debates raged: Can this be of God? Why would He do such a thing? If it’s not of God, then how does one explain some very undeniable fruit that are coming forth from this place?

I never had such answers. I was just intrigued. What WAS one to make of this? It was so far out of my range of experience that it never dawned on me that two decades later, I’d plot out a secret trip to take my now-girlfriend-then-wife to the hub of all these stories.

The event featured speakers and worship leaders from all over the world, all of whom had been profoundly impacted by visiting Toronto earlier in their lives. That list included, among others, Randy Clark, Bill Johnson, Che Ahn, David Ruis, and Heidi Baker. In a sentence, the place was charged. The worship times were intense and lively. Part of that was just physical energy: Bodies swaying, feet dancing, flags waving, vigorous singing. Another part was spiritual energy: Expectation, hopefulness, deep desire that the touch of God being celebrated from years gone by might be felt just as surely again today. In another sentence, some things were odd. Many of the manifestations that made the Toronto Blessing a target for criticism in the 1990’s were on display again.

I didn’t enjoy that. I actually quite disliked parts of it. It was distracting. It was unfamiliar. It was unnerving. I debated with God:

What am I to make of this?

Is this You?

Is this people?

Is this good?

Is this harmful?

The worship times were moving. The lessons were inspiring. I had no regrets about coming. But it was these unusual responses of some people around me that sent me for a loop.

And you know what?

God replied to my questions.

By the third day, I sensed a very clear thought, so crystallized and counter to the thought that preceded it by two seconds, that I interpreted it as a possible God-reply that I should weigh. It was a single question:

“Jason, do you need to understand everything that’s happening in this room?”

It was asked gently enough to be heard but forcefully enough that the right answer was implied.

“No, I don’t.”

It was followed up:

“Is it possible that in a room of thousands of people with thousands of stories and personalities and backgrounds and make-ups that I might deal with some folks in vastly different ways than I’ve dealt with you?”

Again, gentle but forcefully suggestive.

“Yes, it’s very possible.”

Finally a recommendation:

“So how about you stop spending your brain cells and your time here on playing judge, and instead you just tune into what I’m trying to do in your heart these days?”

Less gentle but beyond suggestive.

“Yes Lord. I’ll do that.”

I didn’t leave Toronto with charted assessments on how God moves and how He doesn’t. I also didn’t have any wild experiences of my own. But I did come home very moved by the testimonies we heard of lives radically transformed from brokenness into Gospel-fruit-bearing beauty. And often these stories featured mind-boggling, nobody-but-God-could-do-that events, the type that I’d tasted myself not so long before.

“Jason, do you need to understand everything that I do?”

“No Lord.”

“Then just walk with Me. You’ve already been surprised by Me. It’s hardly done yet!”

So I kept walking.

Relationships

Nobody journeys alone.

All the way along, I shared quite openly with the Shepherds (Elders) of my church. This openness was important so that they could feel well-aware of the currents that were stirring under my surface. It also invited them to be part of the ongoing discovery and discernment that felt quite intense at the time. Pockets of close friends were also precious during this time. However, I was aware that God may well wish to broaden my swath of relationships. I just didn’t know how He might go about it. The lesson learned? Don’t worry about that; He is quite capable of providing what you need whether you can see its source or not.

At least three events quickly pop to mind when I look back.

1) Fischer Family
Our church occasionally receives posters in the mail for city-wide gatherings called Aglow. It’s some sort of interdenominational effort to seek God together, and I confess that I’ve paid it nearly no attention at all over the years. I don’t know who these people are, and who wants to sacrifice an evening to check out something that may well be a waste of time? Yes, those are honest thoughts. But in the summer of 2013, as the “chain link prayer” rumbled through our hearts, a way-too-late poster arrived for an Aglow event happening the next evening! Two words: Recycle bin. But before I got it there, I noticed that the special guests were set to be a young Regina couple who were just fresh back from a year at Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry. Are you joking? Real people from my city have done this? I made plans to attend. Days later, I made contact with them online to request a further visit. That first coffee has led to several more visits, and the start of a friendship that began as an answer to prayer.

2) Praying Pastors
I started working full-time in Regina in 2006. Seven years later, I couldn’t claim to be meaningfully connected with any other pastors in my city. I have enjoyed deep and rich relationships with other Church of Christ leaders throughout Saskatchewan for all of those years, but locally, I was quite isolated. Through little more than a barely-know-you connection, I was invited to a small group prayer meeting for local pastors. A few were desiring deeper connection and a place to support one another. I sheepishly-but-excitedly accepted. By the second visit, enough trust was established that the sharing was quite personal. And from that point, two members of that group — both from charismatic churches that I had grown to appreciate — became friends I feel blessed to call my own. They are godly men with servants’ hearts, loves of Jesus and people. Both have welcomed us into their circles to the extent that we (as a couple and family) have attended conferences and events and camps that we would never have known about otherwise. (On an aside, Shannon would prefer that the LifeLinks Family Camp that we’ve twice attended should get an entire post of its own. When she takes over the blog, you’ll get that and more!) These friends are encouragers and examples to me, and it amazes me how God wove together — almost from thin air — friendships that were so timely for me. He’s skilled at this “link game”. 🙂

3) Mentoring Groups
I completed the Arrow Leadership Program in March 2013 with a real conviction that the next season of my life had to involve some better focused efforts toward investing in other men, particularly those my age or younger. However, I felt like all I had was a desire without a plan. Some months later, the internet led me to an organization called Radical Mentoring. Their pitch was basically: “If you have a desire to mentor other men but need a plan, we can help.” And the angels sang! Or at least I did. This was perfect! So by August 2013, I’d recruited some brave young men to travel uncharted paths with me toward deeper community, greater vulnerability, and stronger growth through a focused routine of reading, prayer, and conversation. Results were favourable enough that I ran two more groups in the following years. Now in my absence from Regina, previous group members have started two more groups, and a women’s group has begun as well. Mentoring in small groups is a powerful form of ministry — likely the most valuable (by a mile) that I have participated in. That could be a post of its own. For this space, I mention these groups simply because those men were a real gift to me during those days. Most were familiar to me before we began, but all were dear to me when we finished. Those relationships needed initiating and investment, but they were yet more answers to a “link prayer”.

In short — using that phrase at the end of this post is an awful attempt at humour — this piece is just an attempt to say:

• God is faithful.
• He loves to meet us right where we are.
• He is not put off by what we believe to be our own slowness or hardness.
• He hears and He responds and He leads.
• And He does these things with perfect appropriation to each of His dearly loved children.

He did this for us.

He does this for you too.