It’s flying time again. Tomorrow morning I am headed out to Georgia for a few days to hang out with brothers and sisters who are growing on this journey. I’ll be at a weekend retreat in Woodstock, and then heading out to I’m looking forward to what God might have for us there.

This has been a crazy week here, meeting with some wonderful people and checking out some new doors that God seems to be opening. Yesterday we met with some executives from Walmart who want to take on “He Loves Me” and “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” as titles they want to promote in their stores. Who would have guessed? They said “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” has bounced around between #10 and #6 on the religious fiction bestseller lists for the last few weeks. I had no idea.

I have noticed that my email load has ramped up tremendously with the increase readership brought to these two books because people enjoyed THE SHACK and wanted to see what else Windblown offers. Honestly, I wasn’t initially thrilled with “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” being so prevalent in the culture. That book was written for a very specific audience, not so much for the general public. But maybe God knew better than I did. (Imagine that!) I’ve been shocked at how many people have resonated with the message of that book. I even know congregations whose leadership are studying that book and rethinking how they view church. Pretty amazing! Oh, yes, a few folks hate it, but what are you going to do?

I got this the other day from a Christian church pastor in Texas:

I just wanted to say “thank you” for your book, “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore”. God has been moving me on a journey for several years, and I am coming to a point in my journey of a transition (but am waiting and trusting God to be clear of timing and opportunity). I wanted to thank you not only for the book, but also for the way in which it was written and the Spirit behind it. It has been a God-send for me, and especially at a time where I had many of the same questions. Several books I’ve read just seem to wreak of bitterness and control in another form. Yours, however, was easy to read (well, in some ways), but also got to the heart of the issue for me and opened my eyes to things that I wasn’t even aware of. I so appreciated it and will recommend it to people as God leads. It’s amazing how God does connect you to people on a similar journey as you are moving through your own.

In any case, those books are gaining a wider reading and our publishing partner has made arrangements for a publicity campaign that will go on for the next couple of months to help people be aware of those books. I am thrilled with the opportunity to make God more widely known in our culture. I’d love your prayers about this, not so much for the success of the books (what does that mean anyway?), but for people to find them who need them most at this moment of their lives.

I’m just finishing editing work on two other titles that Windblown Media will release this fall. One is a novel called “Bo’s Cafe” by the men who wrote Truefaced, and it is as amazing a story about a man confronting grace as I’ve ever read. His marriage is in trouble and his attempts to fix it is only driving his wife further away. Will he learn to embrace the only thing that will save his marriage and himself—God’s extravagant grace? We’re also doing “The Misunderstood God: The Lies Religion Tells About God”. It is a remake of Darin Hufford’s book, “The God’s Honest Truth.” Those will be out this fall and I can’t wait for some of you to read them.

OK. Gotta run. Bags to pack. Family to say goodbye to. Blessings on you all.

I’ve had numerous people ask me to reprint THE NAKED CHURCH because they want a hard copy of the book. It is already available as a free PDF download, but some people just like the feel of a book. While we’re not reprinting the book, I have placed it with a Publishing on Demand service and it should be available at CreateSpace.com and soon it will be on Amazon. Cost is $13.99 for the book and actually the quality is quite amazing. You can order it here. We will NOT be selling copies at Lifestream, so you will need to order them direct. Hopefully that will help those of you who want to read that text in book form. I love the content and spirit of that book. We just decided, however, that a lot of the illustrations were too dated to ramp up for a full reprinting here.

Above are just a few of the pictures that were sent to me in the last couple of weeks by the brothers and sisters in Kenya that we have been helping over the last year. They include pictures of various outreaches, food relief, and some of the more than 30 students we have been able to help attend secondary school, which the government does not provide.

To date we’ve given over $30,000.00 from Lifestream and the generous support of both readers here and listeners at The God Journey. Most of that money has gone for food, clothing and bedding to help those who were displaced by the tribal violence and its ongoing effects in the culture. More recently, we sent money to help enroll over thirty students in secondary education that is not provided by the government. We’ve been blessed at their continued expressions of joy and gratefulness. Here are excerpts from their recent emails that they wanted me to pass along to you:

First thing, I would like to send our gratitude for all of you with your family and the entire body of Christ who have stood with us in this time of need. I would like to appreciate very much. (I know it )does not mean that you don’t have the needs there or those who are in need but we count it grace from the Lord for your heart towards our people. We give all glory and honour for God who has made it possible to join us together. My brother, some times I fear even to ask any support since you have been standing with us since the whole of last year up to now and your support has been a great blessing to our people here. As you know, we network with many people here in Kenya and other parts of Africa and your encouragement as well as support has uplifted many souls back to life.

The last months, I have been going around for mission trips to encourage brothers and sisters in the Lord just to hug them and to share with them the love of Christ. I thank God for the material you sent, I am now making the few photocopies and pile that I may distribute for the leaders. And some you may see when people are holding and we appreciate very much because there is a great transformation through these materials. I am continuing asking God that I may too be used as a vessel for reflecting the image of Christ.

We are still praying for you that one time God will allow you to come and join us for this big harvest in Africa. I am seeing the great transformation through the message of So You Don’t Want to Go To Church. Our brothers here are being led by the Spirit of God. So continue praying with them because I have seen the transformation is taking place and my home church which we started last year I want the guidance of them to start the fellowship in their area. This according to what they have passed through the material. So I need your prayers that I may continue leading them in this truth.

Also continue praying for us that there are some areas where the body of Christ are being affected especially for women and children because of the hunger. There are areas where people are deeply affected with diarrhea and other diseases. Sometimes I feel sympathy, nothing to do but only to encourage knowing that the Lord cares much. I will send to you the needs including medicine that you may also pray for provision.

About the students, they are happy and I am waiting to receive some few pictures then I will send to you. They are praying for you for the heart of compassion. May the Lord bless you so much.

As you can see the need is ongoing and if you’d like to help, we’ll be happy to send any gifts God puts on your heart their direction. Nothing will be taken out for administration on this end or that one. If God puts it on your heart to send something, please go to our Invoice Page and click on the ‘Pay Invoice’ button. You can then list “Donation for Kenya” and the amount you’d like to give. If you use the ‘Donation’ button you will need to also send me an email letting me know you wanted this to go for Kenya and not for Lifestream. All donations to this cause are tax deductible. Or, if you prefer, you can also send a check to Lifestream • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320.

Sara and I are not much on watching the Oscars, but we did see a bit of it go by the other night, and appreciated the quote Jerry Lewis used in accepting his lifetime achievement award.

“I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.”

I have heard it before, and I really like it, especially if we read it as a glorious invitation, not a guilt-laced obligation. At it’s heart is a mindset that lives in the present, that celebrates the unique moments God places before us every day with a convergence of people and circumstances, and that invites us to live generously and kindly with all others, even if only for the moment they pass by us.

That is a life of grace. When I checked on the quote this morning I was surprised and blessed to find out that it was from a quote by a Quaker missionary from France to the United States, Stephen Grellet (born Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier) (1773-1855).

How cool is that?

This is one of the hardest questions I get. At this stage I get to live full time in the midst of some of the creative dreams I had as a young man. I can appreciate others wanting to as well, though I will warn them that it is not all they think it is. That said, I hurt for the hundreds of thousands of people who have a creative talent and desire and want to at least find a way to vocationally live off of their art.

Here’s a question I got this morning in my email:

I have been listening to your Transition. I have been searching for this message; living in Jesus, in His love,  and your understanding of the cross; Christianity is not just following Jesus or believing in Him, it is Him living in us. It is so much more radical than any other message.  My question is regarding surrendering our agenda. I want so much to live in trust and in His love. I am a musician, accomplished and persevering and ambitious but the biggest boulder between me and Him is my career. Although I have had moments of satisfaction, mostly it has been frustration, unfulfilled dreams and disappointment and I’m not getting any younger. Why would God give me the talent, the desire and ambition, the work ethic, the perseverance and then frustrate the fulfillment? How does ambition and dreams reconcile with your idea of letting go of all our agendas to live freely?

I know so many people who struggle with the same disappointed hopes. Here’s how I answered this email:

I certainly resonate with your struggle. It was one of the hardest struggles on mine. Our the ambitions and the application of our creative dreams as vocations are the hardest bits of our agenda to give up. It was a huge struggle for me in my first 20 years out of college. I thought God had gifted me to do what he hadn’t opened doors for me to do. I was frustrated all the time. About 15 years ago, I began to learn to live in that space of living loved. The frustration evaporated over a period of time. Instead of looking for bigger doors than the ones opened to me, I just began to use my passions where Father created opportunity. I think the pressure to live off of my talent and ambition kept me from the simple doors he had right in front of me. I thought I had to figure out a way to make my living from it.

I’ve learned since that God doesn’t frustrate fulfillment of our gifts. When we’re frustrated it usually means we are looking at the wrong doors—those that are closed, not the innovative or creative ones he has already opened to us. I know that was true for me for way too many years. The podcast we did last week, Stop Doing, starts with some opening reflections from some of my sharing in NY city with a group of artists and entrepreneurs. That might help. The reality is for every one person that gets to live their dream creatively, there are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to. It’s just what our society rewards, big scale to a tiny few. There isn’t much we can do to make that happen, and those the doors open for are not necessarily the most gifted or the most healthy. It’s part of the chaos of our world and its distorted priorities.

We all want to be ‘discovered’ and fulfill our dream that we think others are living, instead of touching the lives that are already in front of us. We can do that with art, music, writing, encouraging and in every other way, right in our own community, inside the relationships we have already. As they bear fruit, God may open other doors. Or, he may not. But I can tell you that this much is true. You will find more joy in one person being changed by something God has done in you, than walking onto a stage and being the superstar of the evening. The latter is 90% ego and the fruit of it will not endure.

God can certainly put us in that space if he desires, but I’ve found there’s not much we can do to make it happen. So serve him well where you are. Do what he gives you to do with the best talent and hard work you can muster. Creative living is not for the lazy. And live deeply in him so that you know that your loved. Someday your creative dreams and ambitions will be consumed by the shear delight of living as his son in the earth, then you can live at peace, enjoy the doors God does open, and feel no frustration about trying to make something happen that is not in our power to do.

That’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but I think there is life in it. Luke 14 has a great story about those fighting for the best seats at the banquet, and Jesus’ quiet instruction was for us all to take the last place, and if the Master of the banquet wants to give you a greater place, he will come and get us. That Scripture was given to me by numerous people over the first 20 years of adulthood. I hated it. I kept thinking God was telling me I wasn’t humble enough to have one of the front-row seats. Instead he was loving me enough to help end my frustration at the back table and to simply enjoy where I was at, knowing that further opportunities were in his hands no mine. I’ve been able to rest there the last 15 years, and I love it! And I’ve found the best doors didn’t open overnight, but resulted from very small decisions to love or serve someone that had consequences I didn’t see at the time.

But I do now that God has to win you to this. This is not a matter of us just changing our minds about vocational success. This is knowing his love deeply enough, that if you would truly know that if he wanted you to have a different opportunity, you would have it by now. I know how much I would have hated someone saying this to me twenty years ago, but I still wish I would have listened if they had.

After my most recent blog post, Kent Burgess, a good friend of mine who blogs at Faithfully Dangerous, sent the following quote. It was part of a longer quote published the same day. I love it, and tragically it is too often true of many people:

Love is always about giving up control, and people are trained to think of taking control—even of God. In my experience, most people would sooner be afraid and in control than in love and out of control.

Catholic theolgian Richard Rohr in Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Francis in an Age of Anxiety.

But I guess this begs the question, how much control can you be in if you’re so afraid? Isn’t control for all of us only an illusion that time will eventually unmask? Perhaps it is far better for us to find our peace in learning to live loved rather than in the frantic activities we employ to prop up our illusion of contro.

THE SHACK will reach 23 different translations in the next couple of months, expanding the audience for that little book. Most of the publishers overseas are secular publishers, many of them doing books about other philosophies and religions. When many of our overseas friends find that out, they write us concerned that a company that doesn’t believe in the message will alter the translation to fit their own objectives. I’ve answered this so many times for people that I thought I’d address it publicly here.

I can appreciate the concern, but it seems to fall into a bit of the Christian paranoia that the world is always out to get us and to intentionally distort our message. In the early translations of THE SHACK, we have not found that to be the case. Believers we know in those countries, who were concerned as well that the translations wouldn’t stay true to the book, have since written to tell us that the books are remarkably accurate to the spirit and content of the story.

And why wouldn’t they? Publishers have a vested interest in getting the story right. If they unfaithfully translate books, they will get caught by the many readers who can and will read both translations. If they change a book’s content their credibility and future sales will suffer in irreparable ways.

Why didn’t we stick with Christian publishers? We wanted this book to get into places Christian books don’t normally go. And we’ve had wonderful results from early translations that have been done by secular companies. Even those that had fears a nonChristian publishing company would water down the book or change its meaning, admitted later that the translation was far better than they expected. But no one agrees on every detail. Translation is more an art than a science, since many phrases and words do not have exact counterparts in other languages. Some interpretation is essential to the process, but we have been pleased to hear that translators have been faithful to keep as close to the original as possible.

It has been said that just because people are paranoid doesn’t mean there aren’t others out to get them. Maybe it’s also true that just because people disagree with us, doesn’t mean they are going to distort our words to further their agenda, especially when it is in their financial interest not to do so. I find many believers by and large live with far too many suspicions of other people. They’d prefer to live inside of those fears, then let circumstances play out and see if there is in fact a problem.

I think Jesus said it best. Be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. Keep your eyes open, but don’t live to speculation when reality will always unfold on its own. That we can be kind and gracious to all, but not be played as a fool by those who are truly malicious.

I’m off to New York City over the weekend and into the early part of next week on business for Windblown Media, and to hang out with some fellow-travelers in the New York area. It should be fun. But I haven’t been on an airplane for nearly two months and I’m already dreading the airport hassles all over again. And I’m hoping we use a runway rather than the new Hudson River Terminal. I like boat rides, but climbing out on the wings in winter sounds a bit cool.

I’ve also planned trips in the next couple of months to Knoxville, TN and to Atlanta, GA. So I guess I’m back on the road again.

I also recommended this book on a recent podcast of The God Journey and wanted to make sure you’ve heard about it if you’re looking for a children’s Bible for kids in the 3 – 7 age range. A friend recommended it to me and it has become my granddaughter’s favorite book. She loves it, and what’s even better is that all the stories are framed in grace, with a relational God wanting to reconnect with his fallen children. It’s called The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones with art by Jago. It’s tag line is “Every story whispers his name” and then makes the loving God part of every story. This is a great resource to share the Scriptures with your young children… And maybe even your older ones. I loved it and can’t wait to read more of those stories to Aimee.

Finally, I got this email the other day. I love the heart and spirit of it, so I wanted to pass it along to you as well. It captures the simple freedom of just living in grace.

I just wanted to write to you to tell you how much your book So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore, the story of Jake Colsen, has meant to me. It was six years ago that we left a church where I had served as the children’s pastor. I thought I was there to help children become followers of Jesus, but the “power” of the church had other ideas. I have lived with the pain of the situation for so long thinking that God didn’t love me or have a plan for me and had no place for me in his kingdom.

In the six years since leaving, I have begun a totally new career and have really started to see how ministry seems much more fruitful and more satisfying not being part of anything organized. All my years of theological training though seem to make me feel that it was not adequate if it was not done through the church. Your book was like it was written specifically to me. Some of the things that Jake said is exactly how I had felt and was feeling. I now am starting to see such a different way of looking at the journey that God has for me.

One phrase that I have continued to recite to myself all the time from the book is, “You need to follow him, even when it creates conflict. Always be gentle and gracious to everyone, but never compromise what is in your heart just to get along.” This quote has given me so much strength to realize that it was okay to create conflict because of what God was doing in my heart and telling me to do. Going forward, I know I need to just keep tender towards God and his word and be strong in what He is telling me to do. God will need to take care of the conflict.

Thank you so much for writing this book and what it has meant to so many people. Someone recommended the book to me, and I have certainly recommended it to many other people since reading it last weekend. I can tell the people who are not ready to read it as they look at me with a blank stare when I give them the name of the book. I can not fully express to you the freedom that I have felt since reading the book.

How do we follow him? Live loved. Live free. Live gently with others and let Jesus take care of the fall-out. If we live only to avoid conflict, we may find ourselves avoiding him. I liked what Martin Luther said: “Peace if possible, but truth at any rate.”

“Living loved” has become quite the motto around here. It’s what allows us to live deeply in the life of Jesus. Recently a correspondent sent me some excerpts on that theme drawn from Thomas Merton’s book, No Man Is An Island. Since I have had time to write anything this week, I thought you’d enjoy his take on this. I sure did. His words vibrate with truth and life!

13. Our ability to be sincere with ourselves, with God, and with other men is really proportionate to our capacity for sincere love. And the sincerity of our love depends in large measure upon our capacity to believe ourselves loved. Most of the moral and mental and even religious complexities of our time go back to our desperate fear that we are not and can never be really loved by anyone.

When we consider that most men want to be loved as if they were gods, it is hardly surprising that they should despair of receiving the love they think they deserve. Even the biggest of fools must be dimly aware that he is not worthy of adoration, and no matter what he may believe about his right to be adored, he will not be long in finding out that he can never fool anyone enough to make her adore him. And yet our idea of ourselves is so fantastically unreal that we rebel against this lack of “love” as though we were the vic¬tims of an injustice. Our whole life is then constructed on a basis of duplicity. We assume that others are re¬ceiving the kind of appreciation we want for ourselves, and we proceed on the assumption that since we are not lovable as we are, we must become lovable under false pretenses, as if we were something better than we are. The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them. But their despair is, perhaps, more respect¬able than the insincerity of those who think they can trick God into loving them for something they are not. This kind of duplicity is, after all, fairly common among so-called “believers,” who consciously cling to the hope that God Himself, placated by prayer, will support their egotism and their insincerity, and help them to achieve their own selfish ends.

14. If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved. And this cannot be done by forcing ourselves to believe in some illusion, saying that we are loved when we are not. We must somehow strip ourselves of our great¬est illusions about ourselves, frankly recognize in how many ways we are unlovable, descend into the depths of our being until we come to the basic reality that is in us, and learn to see that we are lovable after all, in spite of everything! This is a difficult job. It can only really be done by a lifetime of genuine humility. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is. We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty but also in its very great and very simple dignity: created to be a child of God, and capable of loving with some¬thing of God’s own sincerity and His unselfishness.

The first step in this sincerity is the recognition that although we are worth little or nothing in ourselves, we are potentially worth very much, because we can hope to be loved by God. He does not love us because we are good, but we become good when and because He loves us. If we receive this love in all simplicity, the sincerity of our love for others will more or less take care of it¬self. Strong in the confidence that we are loved by Him, we will not worry too much about the uncertainty of being loved by other men. I do not mean that we will be indifferent to their love for us: since we wish them to love in us the God Who loves them in us. But we will never have to be anxious about their love, which in any case we do not expect to see too dearly in this life.

15. The whole question of sincerity, then, is basically a question of love and fear. The man who is selfish, nar¬row, who loves little and fears much that he will not be loved, can never be deeply sincere, even though he may sometimes have a character that seems to be frank on the surface. In his depths he will always be involved in duplicity. He will deceive himself in his best and most serious intentions. Nothing he says or feels about love, whether human or divine, can safely be believed, until his love be purged at least of its basest and most unreasonable fears.

But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God’s love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.

Perhaps letting God teach us how to live loved is the hardest thing we’ll ever learn. Our flesh wars against it, and religion constantly challenges the notion by making us think that God only loves us when we’ve earned it some how. But he has always loved you, and always will. That doesn’t change. Whether you believe it or not, makes all the difference in the world. This is where transformation begins!

If you have written me this week (Monday through today) and did not receive a response, could you please re-send it? The laptop I’ve been using through this move died this morning and with it all the email I have downloaded but not yet answered this week.

I’m sorry about the problem, but if you’ll re-send your email I’d be happy to try to catch up some day….