Pickup Your Memorial Stone

Amid all the noise, clamor, and disruption taking place in our culture, God wants to reveal His love and power. That love and power will be visible to those whose eyes have been trained to see His goodness.

When Joshua was leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, they had to cross the Jordan River, which at the time, was running at flood stage. The Lord stopped the river’s flow allowing the Israelites to cross over on dry ground. When the miraculous passage was complete, two memorials were constructed.

The Lord instructed Joshua to tell the people to choose a leader from each of the twelve tribes who would select a single stone and build a stone memorial where they would camp the first night after the crossing was complete. This would be a forever memorial to future generations of God’s faithfulness to deliver His people. 

The second stone memorial was built by Joshua. His memorial was built on the dry riverbed, in the middle of the Jordan. When all the people finally crossed over, the river began to flow again, and Joshua’s memorial would be submerged.

The crossing of the Jordan is a word picture for each of us.  We are making a crossing from what we once knew to a future yet to be defined.  Today, we have been given an assignment similar to the assignment that Joshua gave the Israelites. Stop and look for your stone of remembrance of God’s love and power displayed in the last few months. This stone is somewhere in your life. Only the eyes of faith can see this stone. Pick it up and carry it with you as you journey forward. It has a place on the other side of this time of transition where your stone will be placed with other stones of remembrance to remind you, your friends, and your family of God’s goodness.

If you are leading a family, a business, a church, or an entire movement of people, you also have a memorial to construct. Your memorial will be like the one Joshua assembled.  Place your stones where you stand today on the dry ground of your passage. When your passage is complete, it will be submerged and out of sight. In future generations, leaders will remember that your memorial to God’s faithfulness is there, somewhere underneath the future floodwaters of transition. It will give future leaders who follow in your footsteps the courage to step into the floodwaters of transition, knowing that God will always be faithful to reveal a way forward.

“Today, you will know that the living God is among you” (Joshua 3:10).

We Are Being Setup

We are being set up by God. This set up will bring us to the end of human reasoning as a way to correct the problems currently facing our world. In that place of realization,  God and His love will become our only viable option.  We are being set up to no longer rely on or be satisfied with outcomes created apart from the will of God. Live expectantly! The setup has begun.

Be Careful

Our culture is coming to a collective emotional head in this time of isolation, especially in communities of faith. The number one issue we are all facing is fear - fear of losing control. It could be our fear that the “normal” we once knew might go away and never return. Sometimes this fear is manifested when an opinion is expressed that breaks rank with a narrow interpretation of a critical issue causing someone to be pushed out of the orbit of a familiar relationship they once knew.

When an early Church leader wrote the poignant words, “In the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty, in all things love” he gave us a key to help us navigate through this challenging season, primarily through the area called the non-essentials. Non-essential does not mean unimportant. It is referring to something not worth destroying years of relationship over.

What lies between the bookends of essential truth and expressing love is where we can encounter relational jeopardy. When an opinion, which is the realm of a non-essential, is allowed to become essential or a reason not to love, we are in trouble. A single idea expressed outside what was considered acceptable is sometimes all that an individual or group needs as a reason to say goodbye to a relationship, and punish the opposing viewpoint with separation and silence.

We have all been guilty of this offense at one time or another. Our fear, if not disciplined, will weaken our most cherished theology or, worse, destroy the bond of love in our relationships. That is always such a sad and disheartening experience. 

^“So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity” (Colossians 3”12-14).

Discovering Your New Assignment

Jan and I are processing the next season of our lives. This is not about the next few months or even a year or two. We are processing decades. Amid this spiritual exercise, the Lord spoke, “You will find a new assignment within your current assignment.” What I understood the Lord to be saying to us was that we would not be changing geography or relationships, but we would discover adjustments in our current assignment that would uncover and reveal something new.

As you seek the Lord for the details of your future, do not limit yourself to seeking something new in another place or relationship. God is taking many of us into the unexplored areas of our current assignment to discover something new. He is giving us the ability to see what we did not see the first time around.

Some of you will be surprised at the freedom and the depths of refreshment that will come to your life once this new assignment is realized. That freedom and refreshment will come not because you took on something new. It will come because you discovered something that had remained unseen in an unexplored area of your current assignment.

Give the Fire of God Something to Burn

This morning, before sunrise, I got up to prepare for a dinner we would have later in the day. We have some good friends staying with us for a few days, so after being on the road for most of last week, I was hungry for some home cooked barbeque. I had our smoker ready to go the night before, so the first thing I did when I got up was to ignite the charcoal in preparation to put a tri-tip, beef ribs and a few bacon blossoms in the smoker.

I placed chunks of hickory and pecan wood on top to the charcoal that rings the edge of the smoking platform. I have the charcoal set out for a six-hour burn. As the charcoal progressively ignites and begins to smolder, it will burn through the chunks of smoking wood, giving the meat a continuous application of smoke, creating a nice bark.

When I went out to adjust the airflow on the smoker, I was reminded of how life in the Spirit resembles smoking meat. Our job is to prepare our life like the charcoal positioned in my smoker with chunks of smoking wood sitting on top. Our obedience aligns our lives to receive the approaching fire of God. If we align our life-purpose and passion with His fire, a burn can take place that will release a unique testimony. Our acts of obedience are like the chunks of smoking wood I placed on the charcoal. They become investments in our future when the fire of God arrives. A fire might not yet be burning under your acts of obedience, but a time will come when the fire will arrive, and something powerful will take place. 

If you give God's fire something to ignite the aroma of your life will become as appealing as the wafting hickory and pecan smoke currently working its way through our neighborhood. It is making our neighbors wish they were having dinner with us.

On the Verge

Lately, the Lord has been giving me a sense that we are standing on the verge of a significant moment in human history. The days just before any significant event are filled with normal activities of life. The interruptions caused by these significant events have always caught humanity off guard. It is in those unexpected moments when our emotional and spiritual equilibrium is challenged that God will call certain people to carry the significant moment into previously unimagined displays of His glory. Many who are called in these times would never have considered themselves for such a role.

No one can fully know or predict all the details of what is coming. We only see pieces of a much larger mosaic.  What is approaching will be akin to reformation and renaissance. A trigger event will take place setting in motion the falling of a line of dominoes God has arranged. These are not dominoes of fear and dark expectations that some prophets of doom unwisely predict. They are the dominoes set in place by a loving Father.

When the dominoes begin to fall those whose hearts have been aligned to the goodness and faithfulness of God will be the ones He will use in profound ways during a time of unusual cultural transformation. 

Flying High in the Wings of God's Presence

You know how it is when you wake up a bit too early in the morning and look at the illuminated clock on your nightstand. You hope you can go back to sleep.  This morning, the clock read 3:12 AM here in Oregon. In that waking moment, I saw an interesting image.

I saw a huge eagle flying at a very high altitude. It was scanning side to side gliding among thermals its wings strong and stationary. In the next moment, the eagle’s wing turned from feathers to clear glass. I saw inside the wing a person. They were lying down. Their head was positioned at the leading edge of the wing and their feet at the trailing edge. I got the impression the person was in this position because the eagle wanted them to see what the eagle was seeing. In the next moment, the feathered wing became clear like glass. The person was now able to see the terrain below just like the eagle. The look on the person's face was wonderment.

Some of you are experiencing significant times of transition. You know you are being “flown” somewhere, but you cannot yet see the destination. For you, it is like the Scripture says, “they will mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). Soon, you will be able to see where the Lord has been taking you. Some of this journey required that you simply trust the Lord and not know all the details. He did not let you see everything you had to fly over. He has brought you over huge obstacles impossible to transit without God's help. You were protected from those daunting images like the person flying inside a feathered wing just before it became glass. 

The feathers surrounding you are about to morph and become like clear glass. At that moment, you will be able to see how far God has brought you. Imagine what it will be like when that clarity comes! It will be like you are flying blind and in the next moment, you will realize you are literally flying thousands of feet above the surrounding terrain in a place of great clarity. When this happens, you will experience tremendous joy and awe. Your awe will come from the panoramic view you will have because everything will make sense when seen from a heavenly perspective. Your joy will come because early in the journey you did all you could and then you chose to rest in the wings of God's presence even though you did not understand all that was taking place. Resting in His presence and trusting in God’s goodness became the vehicle of passage for your journey of faith. 

Navigating the Transitional Space of Life

Everyone will make a passage across what is called “transitional space” several times in a lifetime. Transitional space is created whenever we move between seasons of life, relationships or life-assignments. Transitional space requires vigilance because the movement created in the transition exposes us and can make us vulnerable to new and unimagined threats to our well being. 

If you are between relationships, job assignments or seasons of life, be vigilant. Like a cop or a soldier in a combat scenario moving through a transition space from one place of secure cover to another puts them at risk of exposure to hostile gunfire. The timing and execution of this movement must be calculated and carried out with wisdom and proper timing or unnecessary casualties can occur.

If you are about to enter a transition space in your life you will need the Spirit to help guide your every movement. To successfully make your move and survive the transition may require that you reject the impulse of an undisciplined emotion, a prideful over-estimation of your abilities or the unwise opinions offered by other people. Each of these issues can expose you to emotional or spiritual injury in a transitional space. Wait for the Lord to tell you how and when to make your move. Only His voice will guarantee your safe passage. Listen before you act.

Critics at the Doorway of Your Future

Your loudest critics have been positioned at the doorway of your future. Many have stalled at this noisy threshold not because they weren't gifted to function in the future. They stalled because they were unable to handle their critics with wisdom and grace. The presence of a critic is an indicator you are about to enter new territory. Press through these critical encounters with integrity and watch what God will accomplish.

Transformed Under the Weight of Suffering

Yesterday, I received an early Father’s Day gift from my daughter, Anna. It was a mortar and pestle from Bali. Since I enjoy cooking this gift really blessed me. In the bowl of the mortar shown in the photograph are the herbs, garlic cloves and olive oil that I would soon crush to make a marinade for the baked cod fillets we were having for lunch. Crushing the herbs took the flavor profile of the meal to the next level. The fragrance of the crushed herbs filled our kitchen and sparked our appetites.

As I looked at the ingredients sitting in the mortar bowl waiting to be crushed, I thought of our lives and how in certain seasons it feels like we have spent time on the receiving end of an emotional stone pestle. We want to keep things in our lives tidy, separate and unchanged, but there are times when parts of our life will get crushed without our permission under the weight of suffering. In some instances, our lives are changed beyond recognition in comparison to what was previously known.  There are hidden blessings waiting to be discovered in these crushing times if we choose to see them.

God can turn our crushing seasons into something beautiful that will result in a deeper union with His heart. Crushing has the potential to transform the fragrance and flavor of our lives into something wonderfully unexpected, just like the herbs and oil formed a marinade that transformed an otherwise normal meal into something extraordinary. In these experiences, the witness of our life will become like the fragrance of the crushed herbs that filled our kitchen with expectancy. That witness will announce to others that an exquisite meal of a shared fellowship with the sufferings of Christ is always available to us on the other side of a crushing season if we choose to look to Him and not the suffering to find our answers. 

Living in a Dry Place

When Jan and I moved to southern Oregon 20 years ago, we spent our days off driving around the area looking for a home to purchase. In our initial search, we found a nice home on some acreage in the hills. While talking with the owner everything seemed well planned and the location was beautiful. There was only one problem. The home was built in a known dry area. In other words, there was no water for a well. After revealing that bit of information, the owner took us to the back of his property to see a large water tank he constructed. The tank needed to be filled each month by a water delivery truck. We thanked the owner for the tour of his property and moved on. 

I had forgotten about that memory until yesterday when the Lord brought it to mind along with a word of instruction. Some of you have set up your life in a dry place. The more time and energy you spend in this dry place trying to make a go of it the more vulnerable you will become. Imagine a crisis of any kind that would prohibit the water delivery truck from arriving at the home we visited. No matter how nice the home and property seemed to be, it did not have the sustaining source of life. 

If you find yourself in a spiritually dry place and you are thirsty for more, it is better to cut your losses and move along in search of a place where the living water of God’s presence is freely flowing. A dry place is not always a location. It can be a relationship, a way of thinking or a lifestyle.

This time, find the water before you attempt to build a new life. You have learned valuable lessons from building in the wrong place. God will not waste anything you went through. He will return to you what was lost and even more. Find the spiritual water and you will find the source of life needed to build and sustain your spiritual life now and for generations to come.

Moving On

The Church is not a structure, physically or organizationally. It is organic, incarnational, spiritual, God-breathed, and always open to mobility. 

The photo depicts one of the structures on the property where our church met for more than 50 years. Over the years, thousands of people coursed through the doors of our buildings and many began a relationship with God in those structures. 

I remember the day 14 years ago while holding construction plans for a new facility on our almost 7 acres of land when the Lord said to not build. People expected us to build. It made sense, but God had another plan. The answer to why we were not supposed to build would come after Ryan and Kate Rhoden became the new pastors of Living Waters Church in Medford, Oregon.  

I took the photo almost two years after the sale of our old property. The congregation has since moved into a larger campus in the heart of the city. I call the events surrounding the move the "Miracle in Medford." The church is flourishing. The move was a God-thing. The old building once filled with such life and history now looks sad, boarded up, weed-infested and lifeless. The building looks that way because its source of life has moved on.  Living Waters Church has been moved to a new place to release something new God wants to do in the heart of our city. 

The structures we occupy as communities of faith have seasons and purposes assigned to their temporary use. When God asks us to move toward something new, we need to follow His voice and be willing to leave some things behind. We can always take the memories and relationships with us. The most important things in life are never in jeopardy by physical change. They are held safe and secure in our heart.

Our spiritual life is a migration, not a settlement. Make sure the way you define the health of a local congregation is not by its physical trappings and programs, but by its heart. The heart of Living Waters Church is alive and well. Someday in the distant future, the congregation may move again. On that day, I am confident our future leaders, whoever they may be, will be open to the thing new God wants to do at that moment in their unfolding history. 

A Lesson Revisited

The lessons you learned in past transitions will help guide you in your future transition. Revisit those lessons and learn from them again. 

Just like professional athletes revisit the basics of their sport with their coach, so the followers of Christ revisit the early truths God deposited in them. 

Your current understanding of life has been constructed from those foundational truths, so if you neglected or discarded them, revisiting them will help you reconnect and finish well. 

Early truths are not inferior truths. Basic training for soldiers establishes cohesiveness in the military unit. Those basic disciplines help keep casualties to a minimum and provide a commander with soldiers who have learned to obey his commands. 

Any time we have success, we are susceptible to the illusion that our success birthed itself. Success does not birth success. Love and faithfulness in all areas of life are what births the fruit of success. This kind of success— sourced in God’s Kingdom—is not always large and visible in a natural sense. It is a success that can be traced back to those early lessons we learned through love, faith, and obedience. 

(An excerpt from the book, A Good Place)

Walking Through a Rough Patch of Life

For almost 20 years I have hiked the section of a trail depicted in this photo. It has never been rutted like this in all those years. A combination of weather events, poor trail maintenance and just life in the wild produced these deep ruts. The beginning and the end of the trail are smooth and easy to hike. It was just this part of the trail that was damaged and challenging to negotiate.

The photo of the trail depicts the realities of life. Some sections are smooth and appear to be well maintained. Other sections are rutted with sorrow, personal failure or the poor choices made by other people that can affect us in a negative way. These ruts are not the definition of the entirety of our life. They are only seasons of time we need to walk through to get to the smooth part of the journey that is always present if we choose to keep moving forward with hope in our heart. 

If you are going through a rough patch of life it is important to understand this is not your forever trail or some form of punishment. It is simply part of life. Life washes out. It has ruts and potholes.  When you come to a rough patch, hold on to your faith and most importantly hold on to your love for God and people. Love will always win and your trail will eventually smooth out. 

Thank you, Eugene

Yesterday, a hero of mine passed away. Eugene Peterson was known to many for his translation of the Bible called, The Message. I was able to correspond with Eugene a couple of times over the last few years. We talked about writing and leadership. He said he looked forward to reading my book, The Sound of Reformation. His words of affirmation about the book are a humbling treasure. His writing and commentary meant a lot to me as a pastor over all the years of my ministry. He expanded my faith and helped me understand the power of honor and faithfulness.

In 1981 as a first-time pastor, I entered the Christian bookstore in Kalispell, Montana and bought a book by Eugene titled, Five Smooth Stones For Pastoral Work. At the time, I had no idea who the author was or that he grew up in Kalispell following his Pentecostal mother into logging camps to preach the Gospel to rough and tumble miners. As I read Eugene’s book, he was talking about things beyond my level of maturity at the time, but I held onto those truths throughout the years as my experience and maturity eventually found a place of understanding for his wisdom. I would end up reading many of the books Eugene would publish during his lifetime. 

Men and women who carry a life of character and honor like that of Eugene Peterson do not have to be physically present in our lives to be a mentoring presence. Over the last 40 years, the Lord has used a number of people, some who have gone ahead and some who are still alive, to make significant deposits in my life that God has used to steer me toward my destiny. 

This summer, Jan and I vacationed on Flathead Lake in northwest Montana near to where we planted our first church 38 years ago. Our lakeside cabin was not far from the Peterson home where Bono met Eugene a few years ago. On our morning walks, I felt I needed to keep walking past the Peterson home and not disturb Eugene. Some of our most important relationships are kept secure by honoring a person’s private space and not becoming another demanding presence in their life.

Last night, I read an account of Eugene’s passing. A family member said that during his final hours, “We overheard him speaking to people we can only presume were welcoming him into paradise. There may have even been a time or two when he accessed his Pentecostal roots and spoke in tongues as well.”

In his life and writing, Eugene Peterson helped me learn how to live and lead well. In his death, he modeled how to die well – a final journey of faith we will all make someday in the future.

Thank you, Eugene. 

The Way Forward

Some of the most profound answers to your prayers are waiting on the other side of what appears to be an unrelated question or a random act of obedience. You may find yourself processing something that is so important it is consuming all your time, energy and mental concentration. In the middle of that intense focus be careful to not dismiss what you might prematurely label as an interruption to the assumed process. It is easy to dismiss an interruption, especially an interruption that appears to have no connection to what you are processing. The greatest turnarounds and open doors can appear out of nowhere and may not be on your current list of considerations. These things are not an interruption. They are the way forward. Ask God for the wisdom to know the difference.

The Final Piece Of The Puzzle

This has been a week of tremendous movement in the realm of the Spirit. A significant shift has taken place in the heavens that will soon be released on Earth. God is about to amaze us with the rapidity and depth of the coming change.  

When I heard that word earlier this morning, I was drawn to look out the front window of our home.  In the Spirit, I could see a large puzzle hovering in the sky extending from horizon to horizon. It looked like one of those children’s puzzles made out of large pieces of brightly painted wood. I saw the final piece of the puzzle fall into place signaling that everything was ready. 

Expect this heavenly shift to have ramifications in each sphere of culture, especially in government.  We will see the release of unprecedented breakthrough that has been prophesied but not yet experienced.

It's Time To Plan Your Exit Strategy

You may need to exit a toxic relationship, a financial struggle or a season of wandering without purpose. Until you initiate a plan to walk away from these situations and into a place of peace and provision, you could languish in their pain longer than necessary. 

Get practical with the application of your spirituality. The exit strategy you seek requires your involvement. The plan for your exit will include a series of practical decisions only you can make. If you can put aside the challenges you are currently facing and the lies being spoken about your future long enough to delight in the Lord and His goodness, in that place of delighting He will give you not only the desires of your heart but the plan required to make those desires a living reality.  

The doorway leading out of this painful situation will begin to open once you make an exchange with God. Offer Him your fear and He will give you the increased measure of faith you will need to believe an exit is possible. Your new level of faith will provide you with the creativity required to develop an exit strategy and take its first step forward into a new future.  It’s time!

The Doors Have Opened

I was taken high above a very challenging situation. I was looking down on a house whose roof had been removed revealing the walls that separated each room. Then I saw a person in the interior of the house wondering how they would get out of a very imprisoning situation. In an instant, all the doors in the house swung open like they were spring loaded and were responding to a command. There was no longer any maze-like journey of testing doors and running into dead ends in a futile and frustrating attempt to find the way out. All the doors have been opened. The way out has been made. Walk ahead and don't look back.

A Time of Transition

The warning against “not forsaking our own assembling together” will fall on deafened ears in the coming reformation of the Church. People will not become deafened to the importance of gathering together but to the undiscerning threats made by those who see no need for change.  In these times of “forsaking” most people are not running away from God. They are actually searching for a simple and less complicated expression of the Church. Wise pastors and leaders will see this need and make adjustments to their model of ministry and leave the threats behind.

There is a word of caution. In your frustration do not allow yourself to walk away completely from some form of fellowship. You were not designed to live a life of faith alone and isolated.  In the same text of Hebrews 10 that warned us not to forsake some kind of gathering together, there is a promise of what happens when we do gather. When we meet together we are able to  “stimulate one another to love and good deeds”. We need to actually gather together for this kind of stimulation to take place. The form of that gathering can be very creative and outside the box of your current ministry model. It might even appear less-than-spiritual to your critics but to God, it is how He intended His Church to function without all the trappings and complication we have attached to its expression.

In these times of personal transition, something greater than finding the right place to worship is at work. God is giving you a chance to work on your heart and your attitude. Becoming cold and distant will hinder your ability to express honor to those who don’t see your need for change and who will challenge your decision to leave. Follow the leading of the Spirit. He will be faithful to get you where you need to be no matter what happens. Your part in the process is to remain honorable, forgiving and mature no matter who disagrees with your decision.