Wayne Jacobsen

Last week Sara and I went to see the new Narnia movie, The Voyage of The Dawn Treader. The book it is based on is my favorite in the series, especially for Reepicheep’s humorous, sometimes reckless, but indomitable spirit. I was looking forward to this movie and overall I was not disappointed. It’s beautifully shot, the new Eustace actor is perfect for the role, and I love it when Aslan sneaks into camera range. Much of this movie I really enjoyed, but like the others in this series there’s something about it that doesn’t quite draw me in as deeply as I wish it would. They still come off a bit stiff, the special effects forced, and without the heart I found in these books. I guess the movies of “The Lord of the Rings” set the bar pretty high for me. Still, it’s well worth seeing.

Toward the end of the movie as the main characters stand at the edge of Aslan’s country contemplating whether to go further, or stay in their respective worlds. At that point King Caspian offers a breath-taking observation, “I’ve spent too long wanting what was taken from me and not what I was given.” It hit me smack between the eyes. There are two ways to live in this world, either being thankful for what God has given you, or growing in bitter frustration at what you’ve lost.

We’ve all lost stuff living in this darkened world. Some lose their innocence through abuse, a place in ministry because of betrayal, a part in business because of a dishonest colleague, a marriage because of unfaithfulness, or a hundred other things. The enemy thrives in our world to steal, to kill, and to destroy and can seem to find no end of humans who will cooperate with him in that passion. None of us our immune and thus our lives have painful moments as well as joyful ones.

Focus on what you’ve lost in this world and you’ll become a bitter person, driven to destroy others in your misguided attempt to get what’s fair. Focus on what you’ve been given by God, however, and you’ll understand the true joys of heaven. Maybe some of us we have wasted so much time and energy focusing on what we’ve lost, that we’ve lost sight of the gifts he has given us. If Jesus’ life taught us anything it’s that there is still much life, grace, and love even where others seek to exclude us, lie about us, and persecute us.

When you focus on what God has given rather than the things you’ve lost, you can know great joy and gratitude even in the painful realities of the age we live in. God is the redeeming influence in your life, not the destructive one. Those who seek your destruction are pawns in the hands of a diabolical enemy. As painful as they can make our lives, God is bigger still. He can even turn our losses in this age into a treasures far greater by making himself known in the midst of our pain and disappointment.

True treasure is not in the material things of this age anyway. I don’t understand people who use material reward as the bottom line for their actions. Last week the sports writers in our country were incredulous that a baseball pitcher gave up an offer from the New York Yankees to play for another team at $40 million dollars less than the Yankees offered him. The lead story here for everyone was what he gave up. People thought he was stupid for not taking every dime off the table that he could have. Their compass is only set by maximizing income. The pitcher was more concerned about being on a team he would enjoy playing for. Lost in the story was that he was offered $100 million to play for the team that he wanted to play with. Sure he could have had more, but there are lots of things that aren’t worth trading your pwesonal well-being to have.

Just how much money does it take to be happy anyway? A recent study in the U.S. said that it’s about $75,000.00. As people’s income rises to that point their personal sense of happiness increases. They don’t have to worry about the necessities and have enough left over to enjoy. But the study also showed that happiness decreased as income increased beyond $75,000. I thought that was fascinating. More money doesn’t make people happy. Above $75,000 the stress of protecting it, keeping it, managing it, and the complication it brings into real relationships became destructive to the well-being of the people who have it. I know that’s hard to believe. Most in our culture believe that the more money they can get their hands on will only add to their joy. It is not true. Money is not what really matters in life.

I have found a fresh joy in no longer whining about the things I’ve lost. Life in this age is filled with loss. Like King Caspian, I want to enjoy the things God has given which do not rust away and cannot be stolen by the enemy or his pawns.

Last summer when I was in England, I stumbled upon this little book of insights and inspiration from the journey of a young woman who had been struck by a debilitating virus while studying at the university. I was taken with her observations about learning to live inside Father’s love even when we can’t understand why he is not intervening in our circumstances in the most significant way we think he should. Her story and her insights are compelling. Sara and I have been giving her book to people we love going through difficult moments in their lives.

I thought about this book the other day as people are still trying to find that small, special Christmas gift for a good friend that will warm their heart into the new year. Rainbows In My Eyes just might fight the bill for some of you, too. By clicking on that link above you can read my thoughts on her book and even some examples of her poetry.

Now, I know some of you are scared of poetry, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed here. But through the Christmas holidays we are offering this book at a special discount price. Normally $10.50, we are offering it for $8.00 plus postage. Unless you’re planning to order priority mail, however, you might want to order yours this week if you want to use it as a Christmas gift. You will find this book either an inspiring and wonderful read for yourself, or a wonderful gift to give to a friend. not just this season, but any time you have a loved one sorting out their walk with God in a dark season.

Last week I told you about a high-school girl who is making and selling hand-made dolls to raise money for our project in Kenya to help move 72 orphans from a slum near Eldoret onto some safer and more sanitary property. I told her story last week in a blog about how one life can make a difference.

She has sold over $1000.00 worth of dolls and is all caught up with her orders. She’d love to make some more and asked If I would make it available to my blog readers. So, if you would like to order her dolls, either for children you now or to donate them to the orphanage for the kids in Kenya, you may do so at her website.

Sara and I attended the Hollywood premiere of Rust Thursday night, a movie about a loss of faith by a pastor and his attempts to sort out the lies of his past from the truth of it. No, we haven’t joined the celebrity crowd. The writer, director, and producer of this movie, Corbin Bernson (LA LAW, MAJOR LEAGUE) has become a bit of a friend in the last few years. Brad and I looked in on the movie early on as Corbin shared with us his own recent journey into faith spurred by the death of his father in 2008. I have enjoyed getting to know him and the journey he is on sorting out what faith in God means without all the religious trappings.

The movie in many ways parallels Corbin’s own spiritual journey, but also has an interesting back story. Funded by and set in the real-life Canadian town of Kipling, Saskatchewan (and featuring local citizens in prominent roles), RUST is a labor of love filmed on a shoe-string budget with unprofessional actors, but is an engaging who-done-it mystery surrounded by pain, an enduring friendship, and a passion for truth. I think many of you will find this an interesting and inspiring story. It released straight to DVD and is available at all your normal DVD outlets.

I also wanted to commend another movie that I saw on my recent flight to Germany, not for its spiritual implications, but for its tender story of young love. FLIPPED, by Rob Reiner, tells an engaging story of two kids growing up across the street from each other who can’t seem to “like” each other at the same time. Each event is told alternatively from each character’s point of view and is a great study on how we so easily misunderstand and misinterpret the actions of others. It’s wonderful little movie and somehow during the last song it made me fall in love with Sara all over again, something I look to have happen every day. Sara and I watched it the other night and she loved it too. It opened in theaters but is now on DVD.

Also, Narnia opens today. I probably won’t see it for awhile, but THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER is my favorite book in the Narnia series, and I can’t wait to see it someday soon. But this weekend is way too busy and I don’t enjoy opening weekends anyway.

Tuesday night I did a live conference call with a group of brothers who are sorting out what it means to live out their individual callings in Christ and how to encourage others to that same reality. The call it Base Camp and it is part of The Noble Heart website. They have just released that hour-long conversation as a podcast. I post it here for those who might want to listen to it. We cover everything from the redemptive themes in Les Miserables to the destructive nature of religion on our relationship with God. It covers some of the broad areas that most resonate with my heart.

If what I’m about to share with you breeds any guilt in your heart that you are not doing something similar, then stop reading immediately and go on with your day. There is nothing that guilt would lead you to do that would have any value whatsoever in his kingdom or his work in your life. Fair enough? Please hear in these emails the complete joy these people are finding in what Father has invited them into. If you don’t know what that means for the moment, keep leaning into his love. He’ll show you when the time is right and the opportunity is present.

But if these stories inspire you like the did me to realize how much a simple individual can accomplish that merely responds to the nudging of the Spirit in their heart, then run with that as far as his Spirit might carry you!

Street Kids in Mongolia:

I have listened to you guys on The God Journey for a couple of years and always wondered when I would contact you, here goes. I have been in the US Navy for nearly 20 years and just came off my last deployment. I have suffered through some PTSD. We came to the Lord 12 years ago. Five Years ago, the Lord gave my wife and I James 1:27. This verse came to life and He truly gave it to us to give away. We started taking out the widows trash next door, feeding the homeless and even adopted two children from Mongolia. Three years ago, God laid on our hearts the need of all the children that were left behind in Mongolia, so we acted. We started by sponsoring children from one orphanage. 21 kids the first year. As we speak, my wife and 13 year old daughter are on our third journey with over 60 children sponsored, 4 orphanages visited and blessed, plus multiple street children loved, clothed, fed and connected. When God put Mongolia on our heart we would have never seen ourselves riding this humbling and amazing wave.  This latest trip allowed Stacy to love on street kids and meet with the First Lady of Mongolia. To see so many barriers fall and doors open all because the “crazy round eyes” keep coming back.  We received a letter from the government thanking us for being the first adoptive family to ever come back and love on those left behind. This is the heart that God gave us so many years ago we thank you for sharing a snapshot of what we are blessed to be a part of. I would love for you to read the post on her blog from 30 November 2010. Your willingness to be two goof balls loving on the rest of us goof balls, has directly attributed to our drive to just go. To go 13,000 miles to below freezing temperatures and watch God fund nearly every dime and my wife get paid for the week on top of it. I mostly wanted to share this story on the blog. It is simply a story of LOVE. Thanks Guys, see you out there loving on people.

Dolls for Orphans:

(Note: This started over the weekend as a little Facebook phenomenon. Faith is a fifteen-year-old girl that I first met over 10 years ago staying in her parents’ home. She wanted to do something to help raise money to move the orphanage in Kenya out of the slums and onto a safer locale. She started making these dolls and wanted to sell them for $20.00 each and she is donating all the proceeds to the orphans in Kenya. I watched as people started ordering dolls, and then some wanted to pay for a few dolls and donate the dolls as toys for the children in Kenya as well. Soon she was overwhelmed with orders. Here are some of her thoughts as we have discussed this together:)

“Hello Wayne, I just wanted to talk to you about some of the Orphan Dolls I sold. Yesterday I sold four on the internet and today I sold 17 at the salon, and my grandma wants two! We added the numbers up and it was $765 dollars and Uncle Kent said someone was matching everything we make, so it’s really $1,530! One of Uncle Kent’s clients already said she would pay to ship the dolls out for us. I was really excited, so I though I’d tell you. Faith”

How cool is that? Her orphan dolls are all hand-made. Each doll costs $20 dollars and 100% of the profits go to Orphans in Africa. I’d put a link here so you could order some if you want, but she wrote me this yesterday, “Hold off for a little while on the blog post! My mother and I need to get some more made for this Sunday, because there’s a big Christmas party on Sunday at the salon and we’re going to sell some, and I have a few orders to fill. But I’ll let you know when we’re ready because we want to sell as many as possible!”

So right now Faith is doing all she can. If she needs more orders up the road, I’ll let you know here.

It is so much fun to watch people work alongside Jesus when he has put a vision and a passion in their heart. I was deeply touched by both of these stories. Too many times I hear that we need to have large organizations to make an impact in the world. The reality is any one can have a profound impact on the world by simply following what God puts on their heart. So cool!

First a personal note. We had an incredible weekend that first began by meeting with the people who most carry our lives and this work on their hearts. Then we met some new people in the Clovis area who are freshly on this journey of living loved and escaping the legalistic conditioning of their past. Folks came from as far away as Sacramento, the east bay of San Francisco, and Ventura County. I really resonated with the hearts we met with this weekend. Then yesterday we finished up at a community church near here that needed a substitute speaker yesterday. In so many ways this weekend was filled with great joy.

OK, it isn’t really forgotten, but I get so much about He Loves Me and So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, that it is fun to hear with people connect with Authentic Relationships as well.

This morning someone sent me a link to a new review of Authentic Relationships and I thought some of you might enjoy reading it. To me, this book is the horizontal application of He Loves Me. Knowing we are loved by God allows us to explore relationships with others in new ways. No longer so self-centered on our own needs and coping mechanisms, we can truly begin to love others and watch those relationships grow into wonderful friendships that can last a life time. We tried to describe a process here where real friendship can grow over time, instead of push people to manufactured relationships.

Of course there is a downside to relationships as well. Not all survive. It certainly takes the commitment of two people to have a relationship grow through the pains, misunderstandings, and struggles of real life. This week’s podcast deals with the reality of good relationships going bad. For various reasons not everyone has what it takes to get through the rough days to find that the greatest gifts

I don’t generally deal in Christmas thoughts, so consider this a rarity.

Yesterday morning I was a pretty sick puppy. My daughter, Julie, had come to bring our granddaughter over for Sara to watch while she volunteers a few hours at her older child’s kindergarten. When she got to school she told Aimee that Grandpa was pretty sick. Aimee felt bad for me. Later, Julie noticed Aimee feverishly working at the craft table during some of her free time. My daughter wondered could she be doing with such intensity. When she went over to look, Aimee told her that she was making a card for Grandpa because she wanted him to feel better. Did I ever!

My daughter brought the heart-shaped, orange card to me after school when she came to pick up Lindsay. She told me the story of Aimee thinking up the idea and making the card on her own. Amazing. I stood in awe that my granddaughter in the midst of her school day would even think to try to make me a card. The drawings on it and the plea to “Grandpa, feel better,” touched a deep place in my soul. Tears of absolute wonder and joy began to pool in my eyes. Of course, I would get better. Aimee wants me to.

You can see the front and back of her card here. You couldn’t sell this card in any store in America, but Hallmark has never printed the card of more exquisite beauty or more touching a message. You see, it is not the quality of the card that defines the one who gives it. It’s the quality of the one giving it that brings beauty and meaning to the card.

I think the same is true of our lives, especially in relationship with God. Religious obligation led us to believe that our worthiness to God derived from the quality of work we can do, the gifts we can give, or the heights we can achieve. Jesus taught us something different. Because we are already special to God, even our most immature and faltering attempts bring great joy to his heart. The gift doesn’t qualify the giver; the giver qualifies the gift.

That’s why Aimee’s card is a treasure to me. It represents the best gift she could give at this stage of her life and growth. I’m sure a card she’ll give me when she’s 15 or 24 will look quite different indeed. They will be special in their own way as well, but how could they be more special than this one even if the artwork is better, the cut lines cleaner, or the handwriting more fanciful?

By the same token I’ve known husbands to give extravagant gifts to their wise as a substitute for not loving them over the course of the day. Because the life it comes from is empty, so is the gift even if it is costly. It’s how we live and love that matters most, to God and others. It’s not the size or cost of the gift we bring; it’s what it expresses about the life behind it.

I will treasure this card for a long time! It has six-year-old Aimee pouring out of ever cut, letter, and sketch. It connects me to the one I love so deeply and with whom I share a wonderful grandpa-granddaughter relationship. When I see her card it warms my heart with her love, and it reminds me that God’s not evaluating today how good my efforts compare to anyone else’s. He’s just thrilled that they celebrate the growing bond between us, and they are what I can offer him today taking into account where I am on this journey.

Where’s the Christmas thought in all of this? Don’t get caught up in gift-giving as if your gift has to be good enough to earn their love. If they don’t already, no gift will change their mind longer than for a few moments. And if they already love you it won’t matter what the gift is because they will care about the friendship most of all.

Read this in an email yesterday:

Absence of conflict is not evidence of love.

Wow! Is that ever true. But a perpetuation of conflict without the opportunity to humbly discuss, reconsider, and reconcile would be, I think!

Sharing about the cross the Father Heart Conference in Germany

No I’m not being crucified, at least not in this photo. This was a wonderful time sharing about the cross with the Father Heart Conference in Hannover. It was one of many wonderful and incredible moments hanging out with brothers and sisters in Germany. I can’t believe I spent two weeks in Germany and did not have time for one blog update from there. I’m so, so sorry. It was a whirlwind trip, to be sure, one that pushed me to the limits of exhaustion at one point. But I wouldn’t have traded the times I had with so many diverse groups and people from throughout Germany.

I began in Nuremburg, spending a few days there and then the first weekend at a retreat in Bavaria. From there I went to the area around Stuttgart for the week. Then on Thursday I took a train up to Hannover where I spoke at the Father Heart Conference. The final weekend I was near Hannover at another retreat of free-rangers exploring life in Jesus beyond our religious institutions.

What a fascinating trip! I met people all over the spectrum of this journey, from people deeply involved in and committed to church life lived out in corporate settings, some with 500 year old chalices that the saints have used to celebrate the Lord’s Supper through good times and bad, to those who no longer connect there and are wondering what’s next. The common thread was this—people have a growing hunger to truly engage a relationship with God, not just talk about one. Almost in every locale I was asked about the cross and how God had begun to reshape my thinking there fifteen years ago with some brothers and sisters in Australia.

I talk more about this trip in our recent podcast at The God Journey, but it refreshed me in the knowledge that the most important questions to be answered are not about “church” structures or “church” meetings, but have to do with knowing God as Father and learning to live in his love. If we don’t do that, no matter what we do for “church”, it will become a substitute for our not knowing him. Once we begin to connect with him in a real way, then we can follow him as he leads us into connections he wants to give us with others, in whatever setting best serves his work in us and the world.

Truly there are people all over the world who have a growing hunger for an intimate relationship with God that transforms their lives. As many of you know, I rarely do “lecture” presentations from the front of a room, but enjoy engaging conversations, whether it be two or three of us over a meal or 700 people in an auditorium, though that conversation is a bit more stilted. I loved hear the stories of how God has been stirring the hearts of his people to not settle for religious rituals, but to find their way into a real relationship with him. I love the questions people are asking that deal with real issues of the heart and the confusions brought on by much of their religious training.

At each locale we had an extended time to process a nonappeasement view of what God accomplished at the cross. So many Christians believe that Jesus died to satisfy the anger of his Father, instead of to resolve the sin and shame that kept us estranged from him. Viewing the cross as appeasement presents God as an abusive Father, who lures us into his kingdom under the threat of death and destruction. Instead, he is our Abba who invites us into his house to rescue us from all the ways that sin and shame seek to destroy us. There’s nothing I enjoy talking about more. I even did it in Hannover with a huge cross in the front of the building (see above) that helped people have an image of what was going on in Jesus during those incredible hours. (If you’ve never heard this view of the cross, which I believe to be the primary view of Paul, the apostle, you can listen to it here, and it’s free!)

I hope it was a blessing to those I was with. I can think of so many individual stories of dear, dear people finding their way into freedom and resonating so deeply with some of the things I’d written and some of the things we shared. I am deeply grateful to all those who made my trip so wonderful. I’m thankful to be home now for a delightful Thanksgiving celebration with my family and friends. I hope you have some warm and wonderful days this week with those you love as well.