God may heal today but He surely doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to use me to do it.

in morning prayer this week we read from Matthew 9.27-34 about how Jesus heals two blind men and frees another man from some demon.

what was interesting about the translation we were reading from was that it said this:

‘As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”

When He had gone indoors, the blind men came to Him, and He asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”

“Yes, Lord,” they replied.

Then He touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith, let it be done to you.”‘

Wo! Wait one second. Can’t it be according to YOUR faith, Jesus? I think that question would cause me to take a moment and really consider the likelihood of the healing following my answer.

Because when it comes to faith for money or provision or God coming through with an answer on direction or something to speak into a situation, my faith is really strong and in any of those cases i think i would be good with His response or challenge?

But when it comes to healing… hm, not so fast. Do i believe that God CAN heal? Absolutely. Do i believe that He WILL heal?
Um… CHEQUE PLEASE, table 9!

i have prayed for a lot of healing in my life [for other people] and cannot remember ever seeing [beyond a headache or some mild pain] instant healing [in the ways i have heard stories of healing, like this one] and certainly no blind or dead people [yet!] i have seen people get better but i haven’t witnessed [as in personally] people really get healed… like categorically undeniable [oh me of little faith i hear you thinking out loud]

and i am not looking for answers to this question. i am just wanting to share that i have it. if Jesus’ healing of the people i come into contact with is “according to my faith” then they might do better moving on to the next person, cos my faith [in the healing department] has taken a few knocks.

BUT i still believe God can and i still believe He does and so every new time i come across someone who needs healing i try to ask them if i can pray for them and if they say yes [like two people did this last week] then i pray, believing that God can and hoping that He will heal. and the fact that He didn’t [in any discernible way to me] heal either of those two people [have seen at least one of them since] doesn’t make me stop believing. it makes me continue to hunger and question and trust and take opportunities because my faith, when it comes to healing, is more like the father of the demon possessed child in mark 9.24 – Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

i do believe.
but i still call on Jesus to overcome my unbelief.

and keep on, taking new opportunities as they present themselves in the hope that God will let me in on the secret, or the mystery of how it all works some day [not so i can do some kick ass miracles, but so His name will be glorified… and maybe He is still working on me to fully get me from the one to the other]

getting a handle on the rain…

yesterday was School Supplies Distribution day at the Simple Way and my beautiful wife Valerie [tbV] had spent months organising donations of school supplies and planning out volunteers and mapping and entertainment and announcements and food and so many other things [as the LOUDest lightning crashes its way down outside my window as if to emphasise the point i am about to make and by lightning, clearly i mean thunder] and the only thing she couldn’t really do much about except pray and hope and watch weather reports was the rain, which was mostly supposed to stay away, and mostly didn’t…

and so it was all stations go as a whole bunch of incredible volunteers and neighbors braved the conditions and did a really great job in making the best out of a rain-drenched day – from the bag distribution to the dental van, from Josh the juggler to Ran’D Shine [yeah, no kidding] the magician, from the bouncy castle to the MC to the people creating lines and carrying bags and covering everything with rain-repelling tents and blankets and upside down plastic swimming pools and anything else we could find out hands on…

and in the midst of it all i discovered this:

if you look closely you will note the umbrella ends after the handle… that’s right, somewhere on the ground i found the bottom piece of an umbrella and so i decided to do my small bit in terms of raising the spirits by channeling my best Charlie Chaplin and so i walked through the rain holding the handle as if it was attached to an umbrella and told kids they had to stand really close to me if they wanted to avoid the rain [yes, one of two stares told me i had to be doubly aware of the stranger danger aspect of how it might seem to young people who didn’t know me] and most of them laughed or came close and pretended not to get wet.

to the adults who were secretly rolling their eyes or letting out a brief LOL at the sight of the silliness i would tell them, “it is very easy to pack away – i get home and it’s just straight in a drawer and sorted, although it does lose a little in terms of actual rain protection” and they seemed to like that…

simple, silly, laugh-enducing, fun – it brought a few smiles and hopefully made some of the people forget a little bit about the semi-deluge we had going on around us…

and 450 kids or more got bags of free school supplies, and more will be going out on Thursday and sp you can’t go wrong with that!

me, me, me, me, me, me, you?

i’m convinced that the heart of intentional community and even just following Jesus is INTENTIONALITY – that’s why it was word of the year for me three years ago and i haven’t really found a replacement word since then, it just really is the key…

which is why i prefer calling myself a CHRIST FOLLOWER rather than a Christian if i need any title at all, because it constantly reminds me of the followING part of it – it’s a doing word – i can not be a follower of Jesus and not be living it out in my day to day

yesterday we took an hour long drive and went for a picnic with two or three families from our neighborhood – it was intentional community at its most simple perhaps because it was simply doing something alongside some other people who we live near – it wasn’t us taking a bunch of neighbors on a picnic which is key [and maybe at some point it needed to be us taking neighbors, i’m not sure, but yesterday certainly not, if anything they took us] and it didn’t need to be the whole block or neighborhood which i think was another key [and at other times maybe we will do things where everyone is invited and we look for bigger buy in] – this was just a bunch of people who live near each other and are in relationship with each other heading out for a picnic…

and i think a sadly huge amount of christians just don’t get it – their religion is me, me, me, me, me, me and then every now and then the possibility of you with a question mark – throw a little into the offering plate, remember to pray for someone else who is going through a hard time, invite a close friend to a meal…

yet in the equation that God presents in Scripture it is Jesus first, Others second, Yourself third [if you look closely at the order of those you can spy out the acronym JOY because that is where true joy comes from – a relationship of Loving God, Loving people and looking after the least of these] – oh sure you can find happiness without it, but joy is more of a God-ordained happiness that works so much deeper and invites other people in and is truly what kingdom living is all about – this thing was never meant to be a ME-focused thing… Jesus demonstrated that so hugely in the way He lived and taught and Loved.

so the bottom line of this post is really to challenge those of you who read it [who i imagine are already the YOU people, tune up those choir voices] to be aware of the YOU in your life – if Sunday church becomes about how the worship worked for you [instead of maybe how it pleased God] and what you got out of the preach [instead of what opportunities you took to connect with others, pray for them, invite them for a meal] and how it made you feel… and if your Monday to Saturday life is all about you and your family and does not contain much space for NEIGHBOURS of any type [classmate, business colleague, physical next door neighbour, person on street] then you could be stuck in the ME and needing to be a little more INTENTIONAL about seeking the YOU…

…and then God pitched up. [as He does]

so last nite’s youth evening at Fuel ‘Rise Up’ youth week happened in a big way… the leaders had been totally open to changing their whole program around to accommodate the ideas and suggestions of a youth speaker who had been recommended by a friend of theirs but who they had only met on Saturday…

we had two other groups of around 40 each visiting for the first time and so maybe not the best time to be experimenting [or maybe the best?] as they didn’t have any kind of connection with me or anything…

and we took a chance on inviting people to take a risk on God and trust Him to do what for a lot of them might seem like the impossible or at the very least the really, really, really difficult…

we invited response from a group that til then had not been overly responsive in response moments and in such a way that if they didn’t respond the evening would fall a little flat…

in short, we stepped out of the boat [which is a great thing to do when responding to the call of Jesus to do so as we felt He had, but not a good thing to do just for the sake of it]…

…and then God pitched up. [as He does]

possibly the only thing wrong with the whole nite was any moment of suspecting He might not. God is faithful.

i used the analogy of a car with a puncture – that no matter how much work you put into the rest of the car, it will still not drive as it should – yes, it might limp along but until you fix the puncture the car will not drive well. so last nite was all about fixing the puncture.

we had a bunch of cards and pens under the chairs and at the front of the meeting room and invited people to write down the thing or things they wanted God to deal with in their lives [in two categories – things they had done, and things that had been done – or said – to them]

we did that while worship was happening and to some surprise [in my doubting heart anyways] they started writing and coming to the front and dropping them in the box… during worship i had a sense God wanted to challenge the adults [mostly parents and people from the church] at the back of the meeting to deal with their crap and model to the kids a good thing of being humble and admitting they are broken and wounded and in need of help, and they did.

so i got 90 cards and after worship i read out maybe thirty or forty of them to give the group the idea of the kinds of things that were being struggled with in the group [give us a sense of body, of church, when one struggles we all struggle] and there was a huge range of stuff, some really hectic and painfully sad to even read – when i looked at the group as we had for two days you wouldn’t have been able to guess that a tenth of that stuff was happening out there – everyone looks happy and together and like they’re coping and so on… but the cards were evidence of brokenness and pain and abuse and desperate crying out to God.

and then i invited people to stand up and open their hands as a sign of invitation to God and we invited the Holy Spirit to come minister to people and then for people to stand alongside their friends and parents and leaders and put their hand on what God was doing in them – no counselling or specific prayers or advice or scripture quoting – simply invitation to the Holy Spirit to come in and minister – and He did and it was good.

tbV suggested that i invite some of the parents/older folk at the back of the church to come forward and to get the youth to pray for them and we did and they did and it was incredibly powerful as well. God is bigGER!

what a powerful amazing evening. what a faithful God we serve who just loves His people so much and wants to bring healing and forgiveness and restoration. how exciting to be tag teaming with my beautiful wife once more and seeing her hear from God and give suggestion and being able to hear from God and lead things and pray specifically into a few peoples lives. what an incredible stoke to know that there were over thirty people [some with groups they had gathered] praying for that meeting from all over the world – from Japan and Australia to South Africa and Americaland and Canada and beyond… a bunch of friends [and some strangers, even, who just heard of the need] who responded to the call to pray and were faithful in it.

God is good. And when we get it right, which does happen every now and then, His church is good too.

thank you Jesus! all glory be to God!

tonite, we will step out of the boat…

in about 2 and a half hours a youth week meeting is going to be starting in the Florida Keys and i am really excited [and somewhat nervous] to see what God has in store for tonite…

i was chatting to the leaders this morning as we sought to hear God on some stuff and just vibed about how things could look tonite and i was reminded as i was speaking to them that while one of the great things about some of the amazing stories in the Bible is how they turned out when God pitched up, one of the worst things can be that we start to read those stories from the perspective of knowing how the story finishes and it can lose some of its power…

take for example Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego facing King Nebuchadnezzar and boldly refusing to bow down to his statue when the band played even though they were threatened with being thrown in the furnace [Daniel 3] – they are confident God can save them but leave a little proviso that “even if He doesn’t, we still refuse to worship your idol” and so there seems to be an element of “man, i really hope He shows up” and i imagine to them that God showing up would look like them not being thrown in the furnace… but it didn’t – they got thrown in but didn’t burn up [and i imagine when they got home the first thing they did was change out of their urine-stained robes!]

we see David, the little shepherd boy, standing in front of a giant who is terrorising the whole Israelite army and we know how the story ends so we read it knowing he will defeat Goliath with a little stone slung from his sling… but David doesn’t know how it ends when he accepts the challenge and walks out to meet him… we can’t hear the beeps that the censors had to put in to cover what he was really mumbling as he strode forward…

Elijah climbing on top of a dead kid [he lays on him three times and the kid comes back to life – imagine if he hadn’t…], Jesus inviting the disciples to feed the crowd of 5000 men [and women and children – what is interesting about this story is that the food does not get multiplied before they start feeding – they start handing it out and as they do so it doesn’t run out – it required an action of faith] and Peter climbing out of the boat because Jesus had called him to walk on water…

we know how it ends, but they don’t.
as each of them stepped into a action of faith, i imagine each one of them is quietly screaming out to God “please show up, please show up, please show up!”

and tonite, some committed youth leaders who have lead this youth week for years, and who only met me on Saturday, have given the yes to a nite of stepping out in action linked to a similar kind of faith and if God does not show up tonite then i [and probaly them] will be embarrassed – we have discerned what we believe God is calling us to and trusting that He is going to show up and do the stuff He needs to do.

[and i need to write this now because it is a much easier blog to not write later if things don’t go well]

for a chance of a great miracle, there has to be the chance of a great flop or embarrassment… and i am okay with that, because i know the God i serve is faithful – i don’t always understand the ways He works or chooses not to sometimes and as He says in His word, His ways are definitely not my ways…

i have invited 30 plus people [as an echoing of David’s Mighty Men] to be praying around the world for tonite and some of them have grabbed groups of people together and there are people in this church who are and will be praying and together we will all anticipate God showing up and blowing us away by How gracious and loving and mighty and powerful and healing-filled He is… reminded that He loves every single person coming tonite way more than any of us can and ever will.

so we will step out of the boat… and if He shows up then we will celebrate and watch Him work mightily…
but even if He doesn’t [or doesn’t in the way we are expecting or hoping] we will still proclaim that our God is a mighty God
our God is a God who saves…

to read what happened next, click here

simply cow

one of my first memories from arriving at the Simple Way last year within two weeks of setting foot in Potter street and then being dragged off to PAPA [People Against Poverty and Apathy altho in reality bearded tattoo hippy fest] and then to Wild Goose fest [or ticks in naughty places fest] and a Timoteo awards dinner supper was being dressed up as a cow and bundled into a van and taken to this delightful place called Chick – Fil – A for a free chicken meal [if you dressed up as a cow – cow parts downloadable and cutoutable from their website]… it was fun and crazy and Monkman and I went again later that night with some European girls who had stopped in to visit TSW and stocked up with chicken nuggets for potluck.

today is the anniversary of that day and so along with the beautiful Val dressed as a military cow, almost all the staff from the office so Coe and Sueihn and Beth and Janell and Christine, some friends and guests in the form of Daniel and Shane from the Hospitality House and Emily and then with our visiting photographer Travis we met up with the crazy decked out Lahr family [talking Chris in full body suit with dodgy udder and India with a cow hat face] and took over half of the local Chick – Fil – A and got free food [Travis bought his so we weren’t completely leechful] and took photos and then returned home – much fun and laughter and frivolity and spontaneity and it was so thoroughly needed on this day after a long and hard at times and busy week and will give us enough energy to at least make it to if not through a huge potluck happening tonite…

Wild Goose Hunting – Day 2 evening [of Josh Garrels and friends]

there were two external reasons why The Beautiful Val and i were amped for the Wild Goose Festival. one was a guy called Josh Garrels [who had offered his latest cd free on Noisetrade.com which is a great site for getting legal and FREE and often pretty decent music, and Val and i both love his cd – his stuff is just really great both musically and lyrically] and the other, a group called Gungor [altho also super amped to see Dave Crowder live as well] but when we saw the schedule it could not have been any worse as Shane was speaking at the same time and all of us had to be there to hand out free books afterwards as part of the session. long story short, our community went to some effort to hatch a plan so we could both make it to at least part of his show. just another fine example of how community can be so effective [even for something as trivial in one sense as getting to watch a favourite music artist]

[the p.s. of this story is that both Val and i decided to go help distribute books anyways and just catch the end of his show and Josh Garrels was pushed back an hour because of technological problems with earlier bands and so all of us got to see most of his show including a bunch of our favourite songs anyways… and then my buddy Dana went and invited him to come have a drink with us at our campfire afterwards and so got to vibe a little with Josh and hear some of his story which was pretty hectic, so good nite really…]

to read the next exciting installment involving a huggable australian click here.