Sara and I leave tomorrow for a celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary. We’re doing this a bit early. Our anniversary date isn’t until May, but Sara’s schedule is really crazy then as the school year winds down. So, certain that we’re going to stay married until May, we’re taking advantage of this time to celebrate Easter for a week at an exotic locale where we can hike, snorkel, golf, read, eat and talk each other’s ears off. That means the office will be closed until April 1.

Any books or CD orders that come in between now and March 31 will be shipped on that date. I’m sorry for any inconvenience that this causes, but we’re a two-horse operation here and haven’t got anyone to cover for us while we’re gone.

It also means this blog will be quiet, very quiet! Nothing new will happen at The God Journey and I won’t be participating in the Lifestream Yahoo Group during this time either.

Sara and I are looking forward to some serious vegging time! We both can use some real time of renewal and refreshing. We’ll be back in touch when we return on April 1.

We pray your Easter season will be filled with the knowledge and assurance of Christ’s finished work on your behalf—both in dealing with our sin at the cross and in his resurrection from the dead, the firstborn of a whole new race of redeemed humanity. What a joy it is to live in his reality and for it to become more real every day.

Blessings to you all!

This is the other letter I told you about yesterday. If you didn’t read that one you might check out A Daughter Finds Her Way Home, This one I received from a brother in Texas:

Every now and then I get a letter that just blows me away. I received two such letters this weekend and want to share them both with you—one today and one tomorrow. While I’m grateful God used something I wrote as a tool in someone’s life, I know well that the kind of work this letter describes has his fingerprints all over it, not mine. I share letters like this because I know this sister is not alone. There are many like her who have lost the simplicity of relationship with a loving Father to a religious overlay of self-effort. If that’s you, perhaps her story will inspire you and you, too, will hear God’s voice wooing you back to himself.

A new issue of BodyLife, is up on the Lifestream website. This one has to do with sexual freedom in the midst of a sexually obsessed culture.

Interestingly enough there is a new study out by the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control pledges about teens who take virginity pledges. On the upside the study found that those who take virginity pledges delay their first sexual encounter by 18 months over those who do not take the pledge. They tend to marry and younger ages and have fewer sex partners. On the downside, those who take an abstinence pledge are just as likely to get sexually transmitted diseases as their counterparts because they experiment with risky alternative sexual activities that they don’t consider are included in the pledge and are less likely to use condoms.

Abstinence educators have dismissed the study and its conclusions as politically motivated. That’s sad, because there is much to be learned here. I hate seeing this turned into a political football, and both sides do it, rather than learn something from this study that will actually help us in our struggle to communicate sexual realities to our children. Do we unwittingly put kids of faith at risk of contracting a destructive STD, because we think telling them to say no is enough? A few years ago someone introduced me to the failure rate of abstinence. I was shocked to hear the term because I though abstinence until marriage is pretty foolproof. But the failure rate of abstinence is how many Christian teens in a hot and heavy moment on a Friday night fall of the abstinence wagon. And because they have to convince themselves the encounter was unplanned for guilt purposes, they rarely use any kind of protection. I’ve talked to a lot of kids in their twenties from Christian homes who confessed to this kind of struggle in their teens and their parents had no idea.

The study only points to something Paul makes said in Romans 5-8, that where law increases sin increases all the more. The focus on a pledge alone, without a relationship to the living God that sustains that pledge and transforms the life from within will have a limited effect. The mind set on abstaining from the flesh is still a mind set on the flesh and it can only produce death. We certainly have to give our children more tools than a vow of abstinence if we’re going to help them value one of the greatest gifts God gave and use it with absolute safety in the way God designed it.

It certainly brings together more than a year’s worth of effort to sort out how God wanted Brad and I to fulfill an idea he put on our heart to communicate more effectively his life in the world.  Many of you know we were approached about hosting a local radio show last year, but in the end we were asked to do things that in good conscience we couldn’t do.  In the last few months we’ve seen a new way to take that show to the world and bypass the suits of Christian radio. 

Webcasting via mp3 files has been done for some time and now it is launching a new industry called podcasting as people are downloading these audio files to their mp3 players and listening to the kind of radio they want to hear.  The New York Times and USA Today have done articles on this phenomenon and Wired Magazine in its current issue calls podcasting and satellite radio the end of regular radio, as we have known it. 

So much of the Christian media overtly and subtly reinforce only one view of church life that an increasing number of people are finding insufficient to fulfill their spiritual hungers or to help them discover the rich vitality of the body life they read about in the Scriptures.  So do many conversations with other believers, championing human effort over God’s power, guilt over acceptance and the misguided priorities of our culture’s thirst for money, celebrity and achievement, rather than finding the joy in surrendering to Christ’s work in us.  We felt it was time to add this resource to that conversation in a way that can encourage people who are thinking outside the box

Today we are releasing our first webcast and some additional material from our practice tapings. You can find them at The God Journey’s own website.  We look forward to growing with you in this new endeavor and value your input and prayers as we explore what this might be able to do to encourage people in the life Jesus came to bring us.

Continuing with our weekly theme of Q and A, here’s another bit of dialogue with a brother concerned about relationships:

What do you mean loser? I think you may be taking personally, what is not personal and I’d be careful about abandoning one-way relationships. Believe me, I can understand the frustration of feeling like you’re the only one pursuing relationship, but don’t dismiss that gift so quickly. Honestly, of the people I meet (and I meet some pretty awesome people) I’d say less than 25% have the courage, motivation, or presence of mind to intentionally build relationships or facilitate others doing so. Isn’t that sad? I’d think anyone growing to know Jesus would be excited to meet others, invite them over or out to lunch, or even call once and awhile to see how someone’s doing, but that simply isn’t true. And though I know that relationships are a lot more fun when both people exhibit the same desire to get-together, I think you might want to reconsider tuning out those who don’t seem to reciprocate.

I say that for a couple of reasons. Jesus specifically warned us about the trap of reciprocating relationships. He said it in the context of inviting people for dinner who can also invite you back. He encouraged us to invite those who can’t invite us back. The reasons for that may be financial, but they could also be emotional or something else. I know people who desperately want community, but they can barely keep their head above the water of job and family responsibilities to make the choices to actually participate in it. That’s epidemic in the States, I think. Yes, it may reflect a lack of discipline, but not necessarily a lack of desire.

Second, you may be the only relationship that other person has, and though they don’t have the wherewithal to initiate contact, they may be deeply appreciative of the contact they do have. I have come to look at relationships this way: Two-way relationships are the stuff of community and deep fellowship. When both parties are involved intentionally, it is the best. I look at one-way relationships as ministry. I may not get much back from them, but I’m willing to give all I can to help them further along the journey. Over time some of those one-way friendships actually develop into real community as the person gets freer from the demands of this age and learns to live in the invitation of the kingdom.

And yes, I have ended up in far more one-way relationships than I have two way, but now I’m no longer worried about it. The question I deal with now is not, “What am I getting out of this?” Rather, it is, “What is Jesus asking me to do to encourage life among his family?” Every community group that survives over time has at least two or three folks in it who can initiate fellowship, facilitate getting together and keeps others on their heart so serve them however they know to do it. Would that all God’s people lived that way. What a body that would be! But for now we have to realize that few people really understand how body life really happens and have the strength, time and emotional resource to reach out aggressively to others. We need more of those, not less. So, hang in there, Bro! I know it isn’t easy. You may not see the fruit of those relationships for years, but when you do it is worth the time planting and cultivating.

I am all for you having relationships in and out of the body! Great stuff! I just wouldn’t make rules about it and simply be free to follow the Lamb wherever he goes. When he puts someone on your heart, pursue it. Don’t worry about their ability to reciprocate. Be a blessing to them and watch what God does…

Another question came up over the weekend, which I think falls into this week’s theme, or so it appears.

Actually, I don’t think “How do I get to heaven?” is the most important question. This is where I think we’ve been robbed. Jesus didn’t come just to save us to heaven… He came to rescue us out of sin and lead us into a relationship with his Father through him in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, the outcome of that relationship will affect our destiny, whether we end up in heave or hell, but the primary purpose of salvation is to lead us into relationship with him. I think that is very important. If not, then we’ve got to sort out the right ‘techniques’ for salvation between sinner’s prayer, baptism, confession, etc., when the reality of these things is not in any outward act, but in the heart itself. One can go through the motions and really not surrender their lives to the living God.

Thus the proof isn’t in what steps we’ve been through, but whether those steps have actually brought us into relationship with the Living God. Do we know him and are we finding how we can live in him and be transformed by his life and power. Yes that involves repentance at a heart-level and it involves God making himself known to us and filling our lives with is presence. Peter in Acts told the crowd to repent of their sins and be baptized and they would receive the promise of the Spirit. That’s pretty good for me. I encourage people to explore who God is. When they are convinced he exists, they can surrender to him in prayer and confession and in the obedience of baptism. At that point I pray with them to be filled with the Spirit’s life and power.

If it’s all real, they begin a relationship with the Living God that will transform them. Yes, they will probably need some further help learning how to walk in a new relationship with the Lord of Glory, so I don’t mind taking that time with them. If something doesn’t awaken in them to God’s reality, we might do a bit more seeking and praying to make sure something is really happening in the heart, and not just that someone is looking for a get-out-of-hell-free card. Jesus’ invitation to salvation was to come back into right relationship with God through his work on their behalf.

Does that help? That’s about as clear as I can be in a brief email.

This seems to be question week. I’ve got to others that I’ll include over the next cvouple of days. Here’s one that I got this weekend:

I don’t think I tread lightly, but I find a lot of the ‘charismatic language’ has been co-opted by those in the ‘movement’ whose priorities are far less than spiritual and use the terms in ways that are divisive and self-exalting. Thus, I am careful how I use them.

I believe living in the continued and growing fullness of the Spirit is the normal life of the believer. I believe in the present-day value (I would say necessity) of the Spirit’s presence and the gifts. I regularly pray in the Spirit and look for other gifts to be made available through my life and through others as God desires in any situation I am in.

I am not convinced, however, that we are on theologically solid ground when we describe that initial experience as ‘The Baptism of the Holy Spirit’. Scripture uses that term primarily to describe the result of those who are born again in the New Covenant. This is how Jesus works in the heart of every believer. For many of us we were never trained to recognize that initially and had subsequent experiences of yielding to that presence that we have termed ‘the baptism.’ Paul called that ‘being filled’ with the Holy Spirit and described that as an every day reality, not a one-time historical event.

The problem today, 40 years into the so-called renewal, is that we have lots of people who claim to be ‘baptized’ and ‘speak in tongues’, who live self-centered empty lives with no reality in their life in God. They claim to be following the Spirit’s leading when they only manipulate people to their own advantage. I also know many people who wouldn’t claim to have been ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’ by Charismatic terminology, but who live vibrantly alive in the Spirit’s fullness every day. So, I guess I’ve become less focused on past experience and theological debates and more on the present reality in a person’s life. But if people don’t know how to ‘be continually filled with the Spirit,” or grow in the functional use of gifts God wants to share through them, that may be something they will want to sort out with Jesus. I yearn for more of that reality in my life every day.

Also remember this is the five-minute answer, so there is a lot I’ve left out here!

Can I sell books and CDs without selling-out God’s life in me? I get this question about every month or two, so I thought I’d let you look over my shoulder again at a recent exchange I had with a brother I don’ know. I appreciated the gentleness and openness of his heart in broaching a difficult subject. He wrote:

Wayne’s response: I can appreciate your dilemma, but I’m not sure I can sort it out for you. I’m not sure what God is stirring into your heart and to what end. I do not think there are clear ‘principles’ that should guide these issues. I am convinced that as God sorts out his life in us we will know what he is asking us to do. I can share a bit with you how we have sorted it out at this point in the journey. But I don’t consider we’ve arrived at a permanent spot, and are still being refined by the Lord’s working.

The conflict between offering ministry freely and charging for materials is a real one. We’ve wrestled with it from the beginning and still do. Here’s how we are currently sorting it out: The content of what I do is offered free of charge to anyone who wants it. The website articles and BodyLife mailings content the bulk of the content that I share with people. I also answer emails, phone calls and talk with people individually or groups without charging for my time or even requiring my expenses be paid. Sometimes people want to share in those, especially if I’m traveling, but most do not even think of it. We withhold nothing we have from anyone who needs it it. We often send books to people who cannot afford them as our gift. I also do tent-making work outside of Lifestream as God provides to help cover my living expenses.

We look at books and recordings as a different packaging of similar material. People who want those and can afford to pay for them help offset the other ways we serve the people Jesus has asked us to serve. And for the vast majority of people who will spend $12.00 for a movie or $40.00 on cable TV, buying a book is not a burden to them.

Do I think it is ideal? No. A few months ago we released the PDF version of He Loves Me , which is the most important book I’ll ever write. Anyone in the world can read it free of charge now and we did that because God made it really clear to us that this is what he wanted. I don’t know how that will affect book sales. We consider the results of that up to God not us. We still sell the book because man people would rather read a book in their hand than sit so long in front of a computer screen.

I would love to see the day when everything we have is given away freely and those who have been touched by it in one season, would help us meet the financial costs of passing it on to folks who will be served in the next season. That’s how I see it working in the New Testament. Paul made tents in some locations and in others he was supported by the generosity of others he’d been with previously. That way anyone receiving the gospel from him received it without cost or obligation. I love that.

That’s often how my travel, speaking and consulting works, but people don’t seem to have the same awareness of the expenses of printing and duplicating or of web design and availability, much less the time it takes the craft the content for those. We still make them available, however, offset by book and audio sales and gifts from a few folks who regularly share in this task with us financially.
Our desire is to keep listening to him and do what he asks of us. Though I don’t expect that we’ll ever do that perfectly, I am amazed by how he has blessed and cared for us through the last decade of our helping people live free in Christ outside the box of religious obligation.

Yes, part of that has come from book and audio sales, but it is far less than most people think. Very few people make significant money in publishing of any kind. I’m not sure how God will lead us in days to come, but our heart has always been to help people first and deal with the costs as a secondary issue.

There’s one other thought I’ll add to really tie this into a knot. I’m not sure I consider the wisdom God gives me to do what he asks of me is any more Godly than the wisdom he gives a child of his who is a carpenter to build, a CEO to manage, or a teacher to teach. Doesn’t all wisdom come from him, and isn’t he involved in our lives just as much if it isn’t ‘ministry’ as if it is? It’s interesting that some think they have more a right to be paid for their services if they are secular in scope than if they are helpful to others in the kingdom. No one questions my being paid for the mediation I do for public education when that requires just as much of God’s wisdom and favor as it does sitting down with a burned-up couple and helping them sort out the reality of Jesus. I wonder why that is?

In February I posted a link to an article called Ten Myths of Church Leavers. Debbie responded to that post with the following concern and I think there are many more who share her concern.

Debbie, and others who feel similarly, let me say that I sympathize with your concern and I applaud your hunger. So let me make the following observations that may help us all sort this out:

• First, wanting to have relationships with other followers of Christ is what being part of the body is all about. Don’t lose that hunger, just look for ways God wants to fulfill it in you.


• Second, people aren’t leaving ‘church’, they’ve just found that our religious institutions are often a poor reflection of it and are seeking alternative ways to live out the life of the church with other believers. That same door is open to you. God knows how to bring other believers alongside you so that you can share this journey together.


• Third, if you know of a group of believers that meet regularly in a building and you feel God is leading you there to connect with other Christians, no one is saying that is wrong. Feel free to go, just realize what that is and enjoy the fellowship without getting caught up in all the politics and spiritual pecking-order games. I’m in all kinds of gatherings over a year’s time and I find folks in all of them who have a hunger to know God. And one great thing I’ve discovered about people growing to know God is that they are open to new friendships, especially with young believers.


• Finally, it is important for folks who have lots of relationships with other believers to keep those relationships open to others who may not have them. One person told me recently than he knows you’re a friend if you’ll help him out, but he’ll know you’re a close friend if you share your friends with him. I like that. Be generous with your friendships so people like Debbie don’t get left out and feel they have to go it alone.