RETURN TO SENDER

Just wanted to put a plug out there for one of my favorite albums that just went digital for your super-easy online purchase!

This is her page.  Then click on "view" for a little info on her and the album.  You can preview the songs, then purchase them individually or the the whole album.

I don't remember when or why I met Hannah (Emily).  It was through a mutual friend at a bible study I believe, or homeschool co-op event, or...I don't remember.  Since then, bible study, co-op and get togethers have been how we have stayed in touch.  When she put out this album I got one to check her out :).  Little did I know I knew some of the musicians on the album and the guy who recorded it for her sang in our wedding (see the post "Jeremy"). And even less did I know she had written about...me.  I asked her how in the world she could write so many of my songs! :)  So many of them resonate!
I see her smiling every time I hear "I Can't Wait".
"Abundant/Redundant" feels like our life.
"(Im)perfect Me", yup, HE loves imperfect me.
"Every time I Fall"... 
"I Think I Thought"...
And some of the other songs.  Wow.  Love. listening.

Check it out!  She is starting to write songs for a new album too!  Pray for her and her husband Erik through this process.  Their faith is amazing to me, their trust in God. God told them to put their house on the market-they did.  HE told Erik to quit his job-he did.  And know they are waiting and trusting God to see where HE will lead them.  And I thought we were a little crazy! :-}

Jeremy

Here is a link to a blog by a guy who we went to bible school with and sang at our wedding. 

I don't know what to say--his is a LONG, HARD journey.  He and his family really need your prayers in the coming months.  I've kept up with him some, but haven't really contacted him for years.  The one thing I have appreciated about him is his ability to lament...publicly.  And even though he has lamented and grieved publicly  (and been chastised for it) he still holds strong and true to his faith in the God Almighty.  He doesn't desire death of course, but he knows where he is going, should this treatment not work.  But if that were the case, he leaves behind a wife and three small kids.  He has walked a thousand miles through the valleys and desert and has thirsted for more of God.  He has been very open with the pain, physically and emotionally, that this journey has entailed.  He trusts God.

Please pray with and for him!

There have been some very good books that are out there right now. Such as “Radical” by David Platt, “Crazy Love” by Francis Chan, “Red Letters: Living a Life that Bleeds” by Tom Davis, “Hole in the Gospel”, “When Helping Hurts”, and there are others. The question I have for you- if you have read them-is how did it change you? What are you doing with what you learned? Are you living out your faith differently? Or was it just a good read and you just went on with life as usual? Maybe you want to do things differently (how you live out your faith) but you don’t know what to do or where to start. We seem to turn the books into a program/class and very little change happens, if any. People may get fired up about something but it turns out to be just another flash in the pan and it is gone. Where is the passion, the joy, the love that only our FATHER gives? I ask the question, is the church in America hindering/hurting/quenching the Spirit of God? God is not going to force anyone (the church) to love Him with the same passion that HE loves us with. A handful of believers that have surrendered completely to their Father (in body, mind, and soul) will move mountains where a mega-church of the “good content” will not even be able to move a pebble. Have you ever asked God what He wants you to do for Him? Not for any reward you would/will receive but only for His Glory, a selfless sacrifice of yourself. Are you willing to do that? In the movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the question is asked, “Is He safe?” The answer: “No, He’s not safe, but He is good.” It is not safe or easy and it will not work out the way you think it will and you will be hurt and suffer at times but it still comes down to one question that each person must answer for themselves, DO YOU LOVE HIM? If you do, does it show?

FAITH LOST/FAITH FOUND PART 2 (AFTER ZAMBIA)

This is the title of a post I wrote some time ago. It is a post on seeing the title, had made Kel angry, to suggest that I had lost my faith. But it was not what she was thinking. I was still a believer in Jesus Christ but I was lost and disillusioned about this life and what it is and what it is supposed to be, and asking the question “who am I?” Because when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t know who I was looking at anymore. And I realized that much of my faith was what I thought it was supposed to be because it is what I had seen and been taught, things that I thought I had to do and I wasn’t so I felt guilt. And when I got wounded and came home from the front lines…yeah, I got patched up but the wounds went deeper than most ever realized. They went into my soul, a place that only the Great Healer can go. Problem was, I wouldn’t let Him because He was the one who put me in the line of fire in the first place. I didn’t trust Him because of what other “Christians” had done to me and my family. You see, in my faith I had tied fellow believers and God together and when I was betrayed by my fellow believers/sinners I lost my ability to trust them and God because I had mistakenly tied the two together. So pretty much since we got back from Zambia I have been running from God, avoiding Him at all costs. Oh, I still played the part in certain circles. But if you knew me and looked in my eyes you knew I wasn’t right. In my world the sun didn’t come out anymore and my only goal was to get through another day; keep busy so my mind didn’t have a chance to rest, think, clear, listen. I had gotten pretty good at it. But I knew my God, my Father was passionately pursuing me and was violently fighting the enemy for my heart back; HE was relentless. It was getting harder and harder to avoid Him and I was getting tired. I knew this trip to Zambia was God and I resisted- but it was going to happen. FATHER knew I was just about out of steam and HE timed it out perfectly. When I finally collapsed HE was right there to catch me. Not to rebuke me, criticize me, or chastise, only to love me unconditionally, HIS son. All I felt was the love of my FATHER and HIS embrace. That happened the first full day in Zambia, Sunday morning in church. I laid in my Father’s arms and wept and the sun started to peek through the clouds. It was just the beginning of the hard, sometimes painful, cleansing, healing week.

I needed God to remind me who I was- HIS SON.

FAITH LOST/FAITH FOUND? PART 1

(most of this was written awhile back, part 2 is coming)

That’s me, I feel as I have lost my “faith” in many ways. I still believe-but now that’s something deeper. It is probably safe to say that most believers don’t/won’t understand what I am talking about. It is hard to explain but I will try. For many (I know, not all-but exam yourself), faith is about church or denomination or that feeling they get on a Sunday morning during “worship”. That’s not me. I could care less about denominations; it’s about what you believe. And church, I go not for me but for my wife and kids. Personally I would rather be working than standing around talking to people about nothing. And there are some you just don’t want to talk to. I am at a place where all the “Hi, how you doing?” pleasantries turn my stomach. Fact is, most don’t care. Once I’d like to say “pretty s!@#$y, how are you?” and see how many actually stop and catch it, or if they just keep walking, smile and say “that’s good”.
In a lot of ways I am not sure if I have really lost my faith, or I have just finally really found it. In Crazy Love, Francis Chan says, “…the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity.” This statement is so true, especially after being back to Zambia again. In our culture and in our churches we worship the god of materialism. We have become so confused about what are needs and what are wants, most everything has become a need. America (including our churches) is a land of idol worshipers. If you disagree with me let me ask you: do you see joy, pure joy in this country in our churches? Answer is NO. Why? Because I would dare say we are not truly worshiping GOD- we are worshiping our stuff. It might be our vehicles, homes, toys, even our church buildings, etc., you can fill in the blank. Look around. We are angry, bitter, tired, disrespectful, and so on. And that is just in our churches. It is because we have lost/forgot/maybe have not known our first love. The One who pursues you with a violent passion, a love that cannot be quenched. One who never gives up on you even when you have given up on yourself.

WELL, I'M BACK (in more ways than one)

What can I tell you about my return to Zambia?  It was an amazing trip.  It was a healing trip.  And it was a hard trip.  God had a lot planned for this trip and likewise, so did satan.  The spiritual war that took place during this trip was intense.  And it was not directed at any one person but at each and every one of us and our families back in the states.  There were 2 separate groups on this trip.  One was made up of young adults 17-32 and most were single (we were with them the last portion of the trip).  My group consisted of a Detroit cop, who also was on SWAT. There was a guy who was retired prison official; he worked with the criminally insane.  There was one female, an older gal with a young heart and who is a massage therapist.  Then there was me.  I was referred to as the redneck from Minnesota that had more guns then all the other guys combined.   Our team was unique.  The director of Africa’s Child was there, he has been in law enforcement and been a pastor and his sister (who lives there and oversees the guest house, cooks for the teams and does a lot of other things).  She is a gal that has the most infectious laugh.  The thing that stood out about these two is they love the Zambian people and the Zambians love them.  They have worked very hard to build relationships with the people not based on giving them stuff but on investing themselves in their lives.  I have seen NGOs and mission organizations become welfare to the African people just as the same many in this country have become dependent on the gov’t here for welfare, always looking for what you are going to give them next, always wanting more.  God has given a huge vision for Africa’s Child, a vision that only God can accomplish.  What they do right now is what they call medical advocacy.   They have partnered with some orphanages to help them in treating illnesses and diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB, measles, malaria, and whatever else arises.  It is a hard job because the fact is a lot of babies/children die do to the lack of medical services.  They do what they can and sometimes the only thing you can do is love them right into the arms of Jesus.  We spent several afternoons at an orphanage that was run by the Church of Christ.  They had over 70 kids under the age of 4.  One house/building was just babies, another was the toddlers and the 3rd was the special needs.  They were the kids with HIV, TB and other special needs such as downs syndrome and cerebral palsy.  I spent most of my time is this house just loving on these kids.  Some might wonder why?  Thing is, I felt a connection there because I saw myself.  When I was born I had a double cleft palate, I was a special needs baby.  Really no different than these kids except I was born in a country with the medical help I needed. 

In the mornings after we had breakfast we would head over to guest house for morning devotions and then head out to one of the compounds.  They are just different areas of town.  The way to best describe the one we went to a couple of times is to say it is comparable to a slum/ghetto in the states; it is the poor of the poor in town.  The difference is I always felt safe; the people were friendly and the people were filled with joy.  We would just walk around and play with the kids and visit with the adults and pray.  I really enjoyed it, walking through there.  We went through that same compound at night and it becomes something else.  It is when the demons come out to play.   The place becomes very dark and evil.   We went in to see and pray for the women caught in prostitution, women who are only trying to feed their children.  It was difficult to see some of the children of these women just sitting outside their homes/room while mom was inside with someone.  Before you judge these women let me ask you: how far would you go to feed your children, get them medicine when they are sick?  Would you sell yourself into slavery to save the life of your child?  Thing is they don’t realize that when you sell yourself to satan he takes your children as well. 

In the evenings after supper we would debrief about the day.  What we saw, felt, what perceptions that we held previously that turned out not to be true.  The debriefing time was for everyone to process together and share what they felt God was doing.  The morning devos and the nightly debriefing were always a time where there was an equal mixture of laughter and tears.  God did some amazing things during these times together of being completely open and honest with each other and with HIM.  It didn’t take long to see that God had put this group together and satan was going to do whatever he could to disrupt it.  God wanted me on this trip for many different reasons.  The biggest one for me was HE was going to make my heart whole and new again. I just had to give up running and let HIM. 

Brian was busy doing some work around the house before he left. He replaced the floor at the front entry (he put in a new door too, so is working on putting up new trim).

He put a new floor in the bathroom upstairs.

He also put new floor at the back entry and steps.

One of the two bigger transformations was the big girls' room. I wish I had before pictures! He put up sheet rock on the one wall, laid new carpet, painted...

and added the closet space. This room looks so different it's just amazing!

The other major room was our downstairs bathroom/furnace room. Here he put cedar on the one wall, put in a new floor, put in a new toilet, repainted, put a new door to the girls' room and a new door to the living room. We also got new fixtures for towels, toilet paper, etc. Again, total difference in look and feel!

I am SOOOOOOOO SUPER-DUPER blessed to have a handyman for a husband! A jack of all trades! GREAT JOB BRIAN!!!
(so P.S.---he's available for hire!)