In the Amplified Bible we find Jesus telling his disciples,
“But the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will cause you to recall (will remind you of, bring to your remembrance) everything I have told you.” John 14:26
This is a reminder to those living in the greater Vancouver area that tomorrow we are having our Capturing Courage Tea, Story & Prayer gathering.
At 2pm – 4pm, Sunday April 21st, we are gathering to share and pray for God’s heart around the world.
It’s been about six months since our last event, and there have been a lot of things going on in that time – Come and get caught up.
Our last few weeks at Capturing Courage have carried some sorrow and loss – Come and honor with us.
The investments are increasing, relationships are expanding, growth is slowly yet steadily taking hold – Come and celebrate with us.
A trip is in the wings, we are praying and planning – come and look ahead with us.
“Then they were on the road. They preached with joyful urgency that life could be radically different; right and left they sent the demons packing; they brought wellness to the sick, anointing their bodies, healing their spirits.” Mark 6:12-13 The Message – And the task we are about
A Pastor friend of mine from Africa emailed me last night asking for prayer. With a wife in great pain due to an injured limb, and a daughter struggling with serious illness, he reached out to share more than ever before.
I know a good number of pastors from many countries and the pleas and the needs are often the same. The emails for prayer and assistance come very regularly.
With a faith that never gives up these men and women and their families toil forward doing much with so very little. I am often at a loss for words when I read about their tenacity and vision and dedication. I am often brought to my knees in the hearts and prayers as we speak on the phone. I am simply honored to stand alongside them as I journey to where they are.
As a small example these pastors walk hours to minister to those in outreaching villages, riding bikes to surrounding areas and taking weeks in leaving home to encourage fellow pastors and people in other areas and other countries.
In many, many ways it is a hand-to-mouth existence.
One man’s story of sensing the Lord directing him to Mozambique first bought a map to find out where the country was.
Then, when the time seemed right, and the need to journey pressed upon him he left his wife and children for a few weeks time. He didn’t have enough shillings to take him all the way, but determined that God would provide as he went.
And God did. Journeying to the end of his money this man found connections all set up so to speak, to welcome him, to keep him, and to wish him well on his journey. Friends of friends that he didn’t even know existed.
With food and sleep and a bit of money in his pocket he carried on his way towards Mozambique. Long story short he made it there, and made it home. All on the miraculous provisions of the Lord each and every step of the way.
This is not an uncommon story. In fact, there are a few of my colleagues in Africa that are in this very same situation right this minute. Journeying on faith and prayer and a dependance that rides everything on God showing up.
This morning when my Pastor friend replied to my response he thanked me for praying and simply said, “We are praying for a better life.”
His simple statement has stayed in my heart and mind all day long. Because it resonates my own prayers as well. My own journey is much the same as theirs. Journeying on faith and prayers and barely making it most of the time there is a certain weariness that pervades.
While there is much joy, deep happiness, and profound contentment, the stress of barely paying bills adds up over time. It is why this Pastor had not taken his wife or daughter to the hospital. The bills would be too much, at least beyond what he can pay.
I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know what we are missing.
I do know that ministry always comes with sacrifice. I suppose it is part of what weeds out those who are up for it and those who are not. They always say, put up a ton of road-blocks and you will find out who really wants to go forward.
It is why the hurdles for those who want to become lawyers, doctors, dentists and such. The bigger the responsibility the hardier the person must be. And no better way to test how hardy and determined a person is but to put barriers to entry.
Ministry has its own unique barriers. It is not for everyone.
When the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years God provided for them with manna and quail. Just enough for each day. And if they tried to keep it from day to day it would rot. A profound lesson in sufficiency. That enough means that there is enough.
That we must in fact learn to settle into enough. That enough is not about having cupboards full for months on end, enough is not about having all and every duck lined up before we move forward, enough is not about securing our comfort or establishing our rights.
Enough is about having enough for today. How much food can you eat today? How many clothes can you wear today? How many pair of shoes can you wear this day?
Years back during a very rough patch of life I was starving myself so my children might eat. I learned at that time that I didn’t have to have my fridge full to have enough. In fact, all I needed was enough for the next meal. That was it. The meals after that would take care of themselves.
During another rough patch I had a mattress on the floor of a small room and that was the extent of my personal space for 9 months. I learned at that time that comfort comes from my relationship with the Lord, that my closeness with God is comfort enough, and that strength has nothing to do with how much we own or how beautiful our surroundings are.
In fact, I would wager to say that the more things we own, the more beautiful our surroundings, that the weaker we are. If our dependance is on our circumstance or our possessions or our comforts, then know that our fragility becomes pronounced in times of trouble.
At Capturing Courage we receive request after request for financial provision for pastors themselves, for their ministries, for their church buildings, for their orphanages and schools, for their own children’s schooling, for their travel and transportation needs.
At Capturing Courage we say no to all of these requests. Partly because we know we are not equipped or called to fill even a portion of these request. But mostly because we know that none of these things will save us or them. None of these things will make any of us stronger. In fact, sometimes just the opposite.
It will be strength in some ways to be sure, but it will be strength from the outside in, which we all know, isn’t any real strength at all.
Rather, strength from the inside out is true strength. Inside out strength is what sustains us through difficulty. And this is what we are imparting by the grace of God around the world. Simple camaraderie and generous encouragements, just even knowing someone is there, is often all we need, ever.
We only ever need to get through one day at a time.
I may be thousands and thousands of miles away from my pastor friend for whom I prayed today, and yet across the expanse comes the very clear pictures and vision and prophetic knowing to my heart and mind. God directs how to minister even when oceans separate.
With all of its difficulties the life that I and my colleagues around the world are choosing is in fact an incredible privilege. To lose our life means that we are finding it. And it is richer than anything I had ever imagined.
It is also in our hearts that we find darkness and lies and fear.
In essence life springs from our hearts. In Proverbs 4:23 we read, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
Every part of our lives is an outworking of our hearts. It is why it is so important that we get our hearts right with God. That we align our hearts with God’s heart.
Long years back I made this dress for my first daughter. A lot of work and care and effort went into this dress. What you can’t see is it has a crinoline and a little slip all attached underneath.
The collar is cross-stitched and in itself took some 10-20 hours to complete. The ruffling is by hand as well as the ribbon detailing.
When I look at this dress (I saved it along with the others I made my daughter her first five years) I am reminded of how well I wanted life to go. I’m reminded of the hopes and dreams and all-good intentions of making life as pretty as this little dress.
A few years before this dress when I was contemplating marriage I must admit there were a few red flags. My heart was not completely settled by any means, and yet into the conversations I would have with the Lord was the admonition, “It will be okay.”
Long story short, the years turned out far worse than I had ever imagined anything could be. But I look back and I see it truly has been okay, in the biggest broadest sense of the term.
The big picture of my life required those hard years. My heart had to be freed. My thinking had to be changed. My perspectives had to be transformed.
I had to come to know the deep love of God regardless of circumstance and surroundings.
I needed to find God in the midst of hunger, despair, loneliness, heartache, fear, and poverty.
And I did indeed find God in all these things and ways and then some. My hearts rough edges were smoothed to a shiny gloss. The part of me that needed everything pretty-as-a-pin now knows that external beauty and peace means nothing if there is not beauty and peace in ones inner being.
Fast-forward some two-dozen years and on the morning after my four-month old granddaughter Anna died in her sleep and I heard her say to me, “It’s okay Nana” I was ready to bank on that.
There wasn’t a part of me that did not know that it was okay. Really. Truly.
Has it all turned out like I thought? Barely a speck of it!
Is it okay? You bet.
So now, when I sit with my grandson Dorian on my lap, or think of my kids and those they will choose as spouses, the career decisions they are making, the educations gone after or not, I know that we don’t know how any of it will turn out.
The life of this little one Dorian we have no way of predicting. Will his life have challenges? Yes
Will he know heartache and struggle? You bet.
Yet will it be okay? Yes and amen.
I can sit with my grandchildren and with my kids with peace in the midst of the unknown, with joy in the midst of sadness, for with a heart that does not need anything perfect or nice, this bright red thread of peace and joy runs through all the muck and the mire, the unexpected and the difficult.
Because in the difficult our hearts are made expansive. In the unexpected we become resilient. In the unknown our faith is grown. And in sadness we find joy.
Our life’s expanse has room for more people. Our resilience makes way for new strengths. Our faith spurs on new life. And joy, well joy is never taken away. Once we have it, once we know it, everything changes.
We think we must have the good and the worthy to invest in the Kingdom of God. Nothing is farther from the truth. We must first start by offering our losses and our failures, our incomprehensible realities. Only then do we truly get God as good and trustworthy and honoring.
And only then can we invest out and about to those we meet regardless of their circumstances.
Quite frankly, until we are okay with it not being okay, we will never meet others in the midst of their pain. Until we are okay with loss we can never sit in companionship alongside others loss.
Until we have come face to face with our own poverty of soul we will never truly be able to fellowship in the poorest places on earth.
And until we know it doesn’t have to be perfect we have little to offer but grinding expectations and dishonest reckonings.
Bottom line, none of it is okay, but that is okay.
For we, we are simply okay.
It’s that time of year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6
It is soon Christmas. We’ve all been getting ready. Shopping. Decorating. Meals with Friends and Families. Expecting.
And what is all this expecting about? Why do we expect at Christmas?
It amazes me how much time is needed to find ourselves.
As I write this I am sitting at my dining table on a quiet Sunday morning. Outside the wind is blowing and the rain is falling. It is cold and wintry.
Inside the fireplace is on, a few candles are lit and I’ve a cup of tea beside me.
Pure bliss I say.
This time last year I was in Uganda, and so it feels that this transition of fall into winter is a new fresh wonder.
I am loving the smell of the air when I go outside. The crisp tang is invigorating and in contrast the soft lights of inside warm me through and through.
I’ve been relishing in all of it these last weeks, thinking the delight in it is just because I missed it last year.
But upon further contemplation and a real ‘listening’ to my inner being I realize that something much bigger and deeper is going on.
Just over three years ago I stepped away from my very chaotic marriage. At the time I intuitively knew that I would need five years to recuperate so to speak, and so I settled in my mind and life that goal of five years.
It’s been just over three years now and things within me are still coming back to life.
You see, chaos is a thief. It robs us blind of our very heart and soul.
The strongest fibers of our life’s weave are mightily attacked, things we were once naturally good at are destroyed and in that process we forget our passions and the deep yet simple gladness of being.
For me it shows up in the little things. Sure I may be writing books and creating education and building people in various places. But these things are the easy things for me. I’ve always been about the odd and the extravagant.
The chaos attacked in me the simple things and the undercurrents of a ‘normal’ life. For instance, in chaos I lost my ability to make a meal. Chaos destroyed my pride of a clean home and the energy required to keep it so.
Chaos robbed me of simple hospitality and that easy place of having company for dinner. And through the years I lost the gentle expectation of holidays and the celebration around them.
Chaos made celebration a chore.
But this year, this fall season, there is fresh momentum as it continues to come back to me.
The cooking has been returning for over a year now. Bit by bit a desire to make this dish or to create that meal comes to my heart and soul and as I watch myself set about to cook I wonder at the birthing of my old self.
I’m three years past deliberately stepping out of chaos yet it is only in the last couple of months that it feels chaos is truly out the door.
For the thing with chaos is, it follows us. We gave it permission after all. Invited it, mentored it, soothed it, gave it all our time and attention and basically said by action, ‘Sure you can stay.’
It has taken some years to undo all that. It has been an uphill battle all the way.
It is why I am so tickled pink at the holy giddy hush pervading my soul as we gear up to Christmas. I am experiencing within myself that deep gladness of peace and celebration, of contentment and satisfaction that, if I peer back through the curtains of my past, I recognize in myself some twenty years ago.
I am coming back to life again.
Does it ever feel amazing.
So while I knew I needed five years I wouldn’t have even been able to say what exactly those five years were for. The scales and the weights needed to drop off for sure, but what really would be the new, what would replace that yuck? This I couldn’t have named.
Standing back and watching my own life is an interesting thing. The working of the Lord through all my parts is amazing. And so to is this re-birthing.
If I’ve learned nothing else it is this. Take the time to find ourselves. When the core of who we are has been lost in the mix, invest in the months and years needed to reclaim old strengths and fresh vision.
Walking deliberately and intentionally always reaps its own rewards.
It won’t be time lost.
I’ve many things coming together all at once; like a threshold that has been crossed, when a vast room opens up before one, with options stacked upon each other.
Thankfully I learned years back the power of constraint and of deliberate limitations.
Some years ago now I was hit by a car. My knees and the car’s bumper were the initial point of contact, and as I flipped and rolled onto and then off of the hood of the car, many things would change after that.
That accident, while breaking no bones, created enough soft-tissue damage to dramatically alter my life. All of a sudden I could not stand for more than 10 minutes at a time, could not sit in a chair for more than 45 minutes at at time and walked oh so slowly for some months.
I look back, and am so grateful and thankful for that accident. For it created limitations that would prune my life, creating a catalyst of growth just and only where the growth should be.
When our lives are thrown into the air, like a fruit-basket upset, we don’t know what will land.
Often, up till that point, we would say that everything in the basket is absolutely necessary. But I’ve found this is not true.
There are many things in our baskets, that need not be there. That if they were not there in fact, we would be stronger for. Things that if removed, would actually harness our energies and lives in a different and better way.
But in the midst of a full basket, we can’t see it, are afraid of it, and until some event pries our fingers loose from the clasps around all that is not… we just keep hanging on.
I wonder what would happen if we stopped hanging on.
If the fruit-basket of your life were tossed into the air, how might you feel about that.
And what, in the secret intuitive place in your inner core, do you know wouldn’t come back to you. What part of your life, wouldn’t last the upset.
I am pretty convinced that those things that won’t last the upset, are the false things, the weak parts of our lives, the ineffective places, the black holes sucking all our energy.
So, why do we hold onto them so tightly?
I guess we are afraid. Not able to see farther than our little pinky, we are terrified.
And into that space we gather all the control we can muster, with all the manipulations of life and limb that we can manage.
Like small children hiding in dark closets clinging to dusty teddy bears.
I’ve been there, done that. For years and years in fact.
Thank-You God for fruit-basket upsets, for car accidents, for health issues, for relationships that die, for business ideas that fail, and for ideas that just don’t come together; for goals pruned down, for years spent in personal growth and healing, for the focus of our lives narrowing in, for the power of limitation and constraint.
There is incredible strength once we’ve had our lives tossed to the wind. For what lands, what comes back to us, is the solid, the tangible, the real, the rest is just chaff blown away.
And once we’ve got the solid, the tangible, and the real… those are the things we can do something with.
Lives aren’t made out of chaff. Let it go.
It is Thanksgiving Sunday here in Canada. And in the Vancouver area particularly, it is beautiful and heading upwards of a 70 degree day.
As I write this, I’m sitting on my (as yet unmade) bed. In my housecoat. Tea at my side. Computer on my lap.
I had planned to go to church today per usual on Sundays. But the quiet of the day, the sense of gratitude and serenity about life that envelopes thanksgiving, has me still on my bed, in my housecoat, sunshine slanting over me, and in a haze of peace and ‘I won’t be going anywhere’ heart-set.
I’m staying home this morning.
It feels just right.
The problem with Sunday’s is that there can be a busy, busy, busy kind of energy to such church days.
Years back, I recognized within myself and the subculture I’d grown up to know, a certain and explicit driven-ness about Sundays. They are not often actually days of rest.
With the ‘oughts’ and the ‘shoulds’ piling high on Sundays, they wear a certain heaviness that I am quite sure the Lord never ever intended.
And so I’ve learned, to delight in church, to find peace and pouring into there, to be refreshed and encouraged by song and message and people… when I am there.
And when I am not there, there are other blessings that a Sunday holds, and other bounty of the Spirit that is mine (but only as I leave the ‘oughts’ and the ‘shoulds’ behind).
Today is one of those days. Sunshine. Quiet. Solitude.
Later today, will be ample fellowship with some 30 people for thanksgiving dinner.
So right now: Sunshine, Quiet, Solitude, Housecoat, Tea, and The Spirit.
Utter contentment.
True living requires heart, will, and risk.
Yet looking closely reveals this is not as easy as it looks, and that we do not have heart, will, or risk for a great many things.
And this is exactly the point.
It would mean nothing if we had heart, will, and risk, for everything.
Passion would spread too thin, and there would simply be nothing special in the ‘everything’ we would be about.
But take down the options, restrict the expressions, put forth some limitations and constraints, require a few hoops, and all of a sudden the ones who make it through stand out and catch our attention.
Nothing comes easy. For easy makes everything commonplace. Easy diminishes our passion, and counteracts our heart.
Heart is proven through the fire, through the difficulties and through much pain; we do not yet know the depth of heart when all is easy.
It is the same with will and with risk.
Both need some tension. Both require push-back.
Without tension or push-back our internal muscles are weak and under-developed.
And we never mature. Our resilience is stunted, our stamina is crippled, and what heart we did have is swallowed up in disillusionment.
The recipe, therefore, for success:
May you have one part heart and five parts difficulty. For your heart will grow larger in the face of trouble. And a heart multiplied results in much.
May you have one part will and ten parts tension. For as your will is challenged, it find its strength, and once having faced the scariest of things, it fears no more.
May you have one part risk and twenty parts push-back. For risk is proven in the fire, purified in the fire, and honed in the fire.
For, without the fire, the sword is dull.
Without challenge, strength atrophies.
Without tension, the heart grows dim.
Therefore, look closely at the difficulty, examine the fire, detail the push-back, and you will begin to see your purpose.
For with your strengths shining larger than the difficulties, your heart speaking clearer than the conflicts, and with your will putting forth action regardless of push-back…
Don’t let the hard stuff have the last say.