Weaponized Love

No, you can’t really!  The title above should be the oxymoron of all oxymorons.

There’s nothing about real love that can be made into a weapon. But that doesn’t keep people from trying, especially scared parents and religious people.

They turn their twisted view of love into a weapon. When you’ve done enough, especially the things they think you should do, they will love you. When you don’t, they will not only withhold affection from you, they’ll resort to whatever means they have at their disposal to get you to change. They’ll give you the cold shoulder or disapproving glance. They will gossip about you with other family members. That will rant and rave until you conform to their desires. They will should all over you thinking that increasing levels of obnoxiousness will endear you to their point of view.

Sadly, sometimes it even works. Some people would rather give in to the manipulations of those they care about, than continue to endure their contempt or disdain. But even when people meet those expectations, love doesn’t grow. Resentment does. Feeling forced into change is not really change, and the never feel loved by doing so. They just get the money off of their backs.

That’s because true love cannot be weaponized. Why do religious people do it? Because they have been taught God does. He loves us all, sure, but he only gives his love to those who have earned it. If you think that’s true, you will do all you can to get in his good graces. And, when he doesn’t respond the way you think he should, you can still blame yourself for not having done “enough” to qualify for his love. It’s a horribly frustrating place to live and it will wear you out trying to do so. That’s why those people turn it on others thinking they are doing God a favor.

But God’s love cannot be weaponized. It’s never the incentive to change; it is the environment in which healing happens. Every sin and broken place in our lives is caused by us living as if we are not loved by the Creator. But we are! Deliciously! Extravagantly! Overwhelmingly. We just don’t know it.

He never uses his love as a reward because it is always there for us. It doesn’t rise and fall with our performance. We can ignore it, even reject it, but we’ll be no less loved. He knows that his love is the starting place to follow him out of the darkness and into his light and freedom.

So, don’t think someone is loving you when they are manipulating you to do what they think is best to earn their affection. That’s not love, at least not God’s kind. And don’t tell someone you love them when you withhold your affection to get them to do what you want. Neither express the reality of his love and will only confuse people with what love really is.

God’s love can’t be used as a weapon; it is a reality that pulsates through the universe. You are deeply loved by the God who created you, no matter how lost you feel. If you don’t know that, ask him to show you.  Oh, and stop trying to earn it; it will only confuse you, too.

Weaponized Love Read More »

A Conversation We Desperately Need

We are in the final stages of publishing Beyond Sundays, and have set the release date as February 8, 2018. This is my newest title, adapted from a series of blog articles about the phenomenon of the “Dones”, those who have given up on institutional Christianity not to forsake the way of Jesus, but in hopes of finding a more vital and authentic faith beyond it.

What are we to make of this trend and how will it impact Christianity in the Western world? Some view it as threatening its future, while others see hope in re-centering the faith once delivered to the saints. Unfortunately there is much animosity and simplistic judgments between these groups that only fractures the bride he loves so much. Literally for Christ’s sake, we need to find a way to converse about these things in love and in a way that recognizes all the ways God is at work in our world.

This book is an appeal for the all those who seek to follow Christ to be less focused on on where others are or aren’t on Sunday morning at 10:00 and more aware of what it is to engage a vital relationship with God, and to share his love freely with others.

The book is 176 pages long and we will print copies in paperback for $11.99 and in e-book for $5.99. However, you can get our pre-order special for only $10.00.  Please be advised that if you order other products from Lifestream in the same order, all products will ship together when this book is available. If you want them sooner, please order those other products separately.

If you’d like a review copy for an article you want to write about it, please contact me for a free review copy.

We hope to have copies on hand during the first week of February and will ship them just as soon as we get them in hand. An e-book will also be available through all major outlets around the same time. We will announce that in the blog when they are ready.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

Preface

In the last few decades, sixty-five million Americans who once regularly attended a local congregation no longer do. About thirty-five million of those no longer self-identify as Christian, but over thirty-one million still do. This last group has been tagged “The Dones”: those who still seek to follow Jesus and find real community, but who have given up hope that the local congregation is still relevant to their journey.

What do we make of this phenomenon? Does it threaten the future of God’s work in our world, or does it create new opportunities for God to make himself known, even if it challenges our hopes or preconceptions?

I have spent my life in both places. I grew up in a traditional congregation and pastored in two of them for over twenty years. For the past twenty-three, however, I’ve spent more time outside with those who no longer participate in a Sunday (or Saturday) morning institution. I see the animosity between the two camps, and I yearn for the day when we can have a healing dialog consistent with the prayer of Jesus that we would all be one. Nothing, he said, would demonstrate his reality better to the world than the love his people share together.

It’s a conversation we desperately need, and not just between various factions of Christianity. I hope this book can seed that conversation between friends and families in communities throughout the world. Whether you attend a local church or whether you don’t, responding to this phenomenon will have repercussions for generations to come. We can continue to treat each other with suspicion and judgment that further fracture our Father’s family, or we can celebrate all the ways he works to bring people to himself and transform them in his love.

Additionally, I hope this book encourages those who have lost their mooring in institutional Christianity and yet still hunger for a relationship with God and real community with others. The failures of organized religion do not discount God’s reality or your opportunity to get to know him. I want to help you navigate a life of growing faith and impact in the world beyond the institutional borders that may have harmed you.

This is a propitious moment in Christian history, and all the more so as the world darkens around us. May we all respond in a way that allows the glory of the Lord to arise out of the love of his people, and by doing so, proclaim to the world that our God is real and worthy to be followed.

A Conversation We Desperately Need Read More »

I Believe In a Redeemer

A good friend sent me this story the other day….

At the time he was manager of the campus radio station at Oral Roberts University and a seminar speaker on campus in the late 1960s. One of the best sermons he ever heard happened one morning in chapel from Campus Chaplain, Tommy Tyson:

Brother Tyson got up and read from 1 Cor. 1:30-31. “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”

Then he said this: “I do not believe in redemption, I do not believe in healing, I do not believe in deliverance, I do not believe in salvation.”

As he said his the student body and faculty present gasped. He let a few moments pass before finishing, “Here’s what I believe. I believe in a Redeemer, a Healer, a Deliverer, a Savior and much, much more!”

Never settle for theologies apart from the person of Jesus Christ! Wayne, I never forgot that moment.

I love that!

It gave me goose bumps to read it.

Whenever we separate the Gospel from our relationship to the Living Christ, we are left with empty doctrine, true though it be! The purpose of the Incarnation was not to start a Christian religion with finely-tuned doctrine and rituals, but to unveil a mystery—”Christ in you, the hope of glory!”

Get to know him and watch his glory unfold. Don’t settle for substitutes.

I Believe In a Redeemer Read More »

Truth Has Its Time

Among those things I know now, that I wish I’d known when I was twenty-two and fresh out of college with my Bible degree, is that you cannot convince someone that something is true if they are not ready to hear of it.

Somehow I got the idea that “ministry” was about knowing the truth and convincing others to believe it, too.There were two problems with that. Much of the “truth” I had then, didn’t turn out to be so true at all. And, all of the time spent trying to argue people into my ideas, even those that turned out to be true, were as fruitless as trying to get my grapevines to produce grapes in February.

Truth has its time, and as I look back over my life at the start of a new year, I have a deep appreciation for the trajectory of revelation and transformation in the human heart. These are not things we control, but I love watching how the Holy Spirit begins to unravel our false ideas from the inside and prepare us for those moments when the Truth clarifies in our heart and we find ourselves able to take a step forward in embracing his love or finding a way to share it with others. I’ve had a lot of joy over the past few years watching this process in my own life as well as watching it in others as well.

I was reminded of this by a recent email I received:

I have just finished listening to Finding Church for the 4th time yesterday in the past 2 months (I have a long drive to work!)

  • 30 years ago the old me would have thought it weird.
  • 20 years ago I would have tried to understand what you were saying.
  • 10 years ago I would have wished it was true.
  • 8 years ago I would have not thought it clear enough as I looked for the 10 steps.
  • But now I see.  It is just by loving the one in front of you and seeing how God touches them through the interaction. It is learning that you are loved and sharing that love with others.

I laughed when I read it. Thirty years ago I probably would have declared those ideas heresy. Twenty years ago I would have been intrigued with the hope, but thought them too idealistic to work. Ten years ago, I was already seeing that reality live out in my life and the lives of others around me and my view of his church was changing. Today, I can’t think of the church any other way and with that has come a deep appreciation for the church Jesus is building in the world in spite of all that we humans have done to craft her in our own image. And when I think about ten years from now, my heart leaps with the anticipation of what I might yet learn about him and his work in the world.

Truth has its time. We don’t so much learn it in a classroom as it unfolds in us out of our growing relationship to God. Growth and transformation are a process that takes time. It would be nice to recognize truth out of the clear blue and just embrace it, but it rarely works that way. Mostly truth works its way into our heart over time as God wins us more deeply into his affection for us. Maybe that’s what Jesus had in mind when he told the disciples he would send them Another Comforter and he would guide them into all truth. He even admitted to them that he had so many more things to teach them but that they weren’t ready for them yet. I love how Jesus had a sense of the unfolding reality of truth in our hearts. He didn’t confront them with truth and demand they make a choice, but he opened the door to truth to see who was ready to walk through.

If I’d known that forty years ago, my heart would have been softer in the hands of the Master. I would have been far more gentler with people who didn’t see what I hoped they would see. I would have spent far less time trying to argue people into my view of truth. And, I would have trusted the Spirit to guide me better when others were trying to convince me of things they thought were true that didn’t yet make sense to me.

I would have taken all that energy I used to try and convince others and to let him teach me to walk in the truth I had already been given. And, I would have spent far more time encouraging others who were already hungry for the truth, rather than trying to convince others of it who weren’t yet ready and couldn’t yet see it.

In short, seeing the Spirit as the convincer of people, and I their friend has allowed me to be more relaxed in God’s process, not only in my heart, but with others around me as well. It is far more fruitful to help people into the truth they are seeking, rather than to badger them into what they are resisting. Believe me!

Truth Has Its Time Read More »

Are You Worthy of Love? 

If you gave this question serous consideration, we probably need to talk.

The saddest words I hear from people are those that wonder if they are worthy of God’s love. That question is predicated on the biggest lie to find it’s way into God’s creation—that love can be earned.

It can’t.

Nothing disproves that lie better than the coming of Christ into our world that we celebrate at this Christmas season. He didn’t come to redeem people the Father was disgusted with, but those he loved. Even on the night Christ was born, the shepherds heard the angels proclaim, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

Pleased?  Really? With all the brokenness in the world? Sin was rampant, Humanity was ever at war with itself and his own people were under Roman captivity and lost in their legalism. How could God be pleased with humankind?

Luke certainly didn’t mean God was pleased with the brokenness in his creation, but that he was pleased with humanity in spite of it. God’s love is not so fickle as to come and go based on how good we are. Love is love, even at our most broken, no less than you would have for your children. Our struggle in the darkness only endears us to him as his compassion seeks to rescue and redeem us.

We are all worthy of love because of the place we hold in Father’s heart. No failure, or broken place changes that. The prodigal son was loved as much when he was wasting his father’s money as he was when he returned home. It’s just that he wasn’t living in that love. He didn’t believe it and though he thought he had good evidence for his conclusion, they were based on the lie. Even when he returns home he considers himself  “not worthy” to be called a son.

But he was worthy simply because of the value he held in his father’s heart. The joy of the Gospel is not in getting God to love us, but to relax into the reality of the love he already has for us. Those who grew up abused or neglected have a hard time embracing that. The rejection of their parents seemed proof that they were so flawed as to be unworthy of love. But that is just part of the lie.

Those who grow up in religious settings, who think their performance can endear them to God, fall victim to the same lie. You can’t earn what you already have. You are loved, no less today than when the Father conceived you in his heart before you were born.

That’s the Gospel. Believe it or not, the Creator of the universe is your loving Father. You have the choice to run to that love and embrace it, or hide outside of it as long as you want. Love offers a door; it doesn’t force it’s way.

He loves you as much as any other person on the planet. For those who don’t know that in the deepest part of your soul, Sara and I are praying that Father will reveal that to you and you will find the freedom to joyfully embrace how deeply he delights in you. That’s where this journey of faith truly begins.

And what a Christmas miracle that is!

Notes For the New Year:

Wayne’s Latest Book Is Almost Here

Beyond Sundays, Wayne’s newest book, will be available early in 2018. It will cost $12.00 and we’ll begin taking pre-orders in early January.  It will also be available by e-book as soon as we can get that done.

This is an adaptation of blogs postings Wayne has written over the last year about the current dilemma of people leaving the traditional congregation and the opportunity it affords for the whole church to celebrate all the ways that Father is at work among his people and how he is preparing the bride for the return of his Son.

 

Travel Dates for Early in 2018

  • Jacksonville, FL- January 18
  • Raleigh, NC – January 19-22
  • Greensboro, NC – January 23-24
  • Charlotte, NC – January 25-29
  • Phoenix, AZ- February
  • Abilene, Tx – March 22-25

If you’re in these areas and still want to plan something, we do have some available time. Or if you just want to join us, please see our Travel Page, where details will be posted when we have them. If you’d like to be notified when I’m coming to your area you can sign up on our email list and include your address.

Kenya Update

Thanks to the generosity of so many of you, we have given just under $200,000 this year to the people in Kenya with orphan children and to help the people in Pokot establish a sustainable future. We put in two agricultural projects so they can grow their own food, and have helped with hospital staff, medicine, food, education and micro-finance loans to help create enterprise. Get more information here.

Staying Up With Lifestream

If you did not receive this by email yesterday or today, then you re not signed up for our blog or our mailing list. If you’d like to be, you can do so here. Include your address details if you want to receive Travel Updates when I’m planning a trip to your area. If you’re not signed up to get my blogs or the podcasts straight to your inbox, you can go to those home pages and submit your email address in the appropriate are.

Are You Worthy of Love?  Read More »

A Jake around Every Corner?

Sometimes, somewhere beyond the cosmos, our Father must look over at Jesus and with a big smile on his face say, “Watch this…”

This might be one of those times.

I’ve had an email correspondence over the last few days with a woman in Australia that has brought more than a few smiles to my heart. I love how the Spirit works, especially when we’re a bit clueless to what he is doing. This is the story she shared with me, pieced together from a few emails.  I love how the Spirit just keeps knitting his family together even in very unexpected ways.

I first bought your book So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore for my eldest son of six children when he was not wanting to go to church as a late teenager. I gave it to him to encourage him back into the fold, without actually even looking through the book to see what it was about.

He read it and said “Mum, did you even read this book? I don’t think it says what you thought it might say.”

So, I read it for myself, and laughed, and thought you were a bit misled. Fast forward a few years and I was in a totally different place in my relationship with God and re-read it after some friends had just read it and loved it. Then I “got” it. My youngest three (by now teenagers) were not wanting to go to church anymore as well.

For a whole bunch of reasons, including considering my children – we left the institution ourselves. I said to the pastor at the time “I fear for my children if I stay and I fear for my children if I go” My fear was that if I stayed, they would just think this is what Christianity looked like and eventually reject it altogether as too boring.  I knew there was so much more. My fear in leaving was the unknown, and the worry that we were making a big mistake that would have consequences in my children’s lives. They were being homeschooled and church was a source of socialisation. But it was a lonely place for them even in the midst of church  and for me too) as there were really no other young people there for friendship anyway. It certainly has been an interesting journey and this is by far the short version. It has not been a mistake.

In May last year, my husband and I were taking a trip with some friends to the centre of Australia and had to take a huge detour because of floods. This meant we called in on some acquaintances who run an art gallery and they sent us on our way with CDs of your Transitions teaching. My, the lengths God goes to sometimes! My husband doesn’t normally listen to CD’s but because we were travelling long distances, he had nothing better to do. The teaching really spoke to him in a life changing way. I keep listening to them over and over – so much good stuff in there and I just want to absorb it all into my spirit. I have since passed them on to someone else.

I would never have imagined myself in the place I am in now. I have grown up going to church every week and we have always been very involved and busy with the various programs. But that was another aspect of  us leaving – in many ways I felt like I had hidden myself from the world in the church. I was so busy with the church, I didn’t have time or energy to invest anywhere else. I gradually got myself out of all the rosters and then joined the local soccer club committee as my children have all played over the last 20 years, and my youngest son still plays. I considered that I had spent so many years serving God in the church, now I was serving Him outside of the church and it gave me an opportunity to get to know and  love some other people in the community. A friend once asked me, who gets to benefit from your gifting if you are in church?  Interestingly, I feel like I’m actually using my spiritual gifts as the secretary there.

We attended a wedding last weekend and a friend of the bride was asked to share a short address during the wedding. As I listened to him speak about the most important thing the bride and groom, and all of us, need is to know how loved we are by our Father God and to then just love others. I recognised a fellow pilgrim on the journey. I had never met this man before but my husband and I were able to sit with him and his wife during the reception. I began to sus him out and when he confessed that he”actually doesn’t attend church anymore”, I said ‘welcome to the club”. When I asked him for his story, he just said “Well, you know Jake don’t you?”  Indeed I do!

My husband said later, “We just keep running into these people…”  God is definitely up to something!

The journey continues but thank you so much for allowing God to take you on the journey and then share it with others.

Do you hear the click of his knitting needles as the Spirit brings Jesus’ church together in the world?

A Jake around Every Corner? Read More »

Finishing our Discussion on Finding Church

For the last eighteen months a group of us have been working through the themes of Finding Church chapter by chapter. We are now reaching the end of that study.  The discussion, however, will remain up as other people can come along and start with chapter 1 and work through it now at their own speed. Our hope was to let people contemplate the content of each chapter and how that might impact their own lives as they seek to follow Jesus.

It has been a wonderful study with lots of contributions by others.  You can find out more here if you are interested.

One of the discussion questions I posed today goes to the heart of all of our journeys.  You might want to contemplate it in your own:

Perhaps the greatest barrier in our own relationship with Jesus as well as connecting to his church in the world is to lay down our own agendas and expectations to let him truly be in control of the process. That’s the most difficult obstacle for us humans to face. We’re afraid if we let go, we won’t get what we want. And that may be true, but the hope of the Gospel is, when we give up we’ll get something better than we were trying to hold on to because he does know best about everything.

In your spiritual journey, what agenda in your heart has been (or still is) the most difficult to recognize and lay down?

For me, it was wanting to follow Jesus AND get the overwhelming approval of other Christians around me. For nearly forty years I never saw the inherent conflict between those two things, but my need for significance nonetheless made me double-minded in a way that caused me to miss countless times the life Jesus was nudging me into.

Hopefully other people will share theirs and we’ll all see that we’re not alone in this journey. Letting Jesus be our Lord and Leader is far easier to confess than it is to do, and the toughest part may be recognizing the problem itself. Our need to control travels in many disguises including commitment and devotion. It feels like we are doing our part, when in fact we’re trying to do his. It will lead to endless frustration until we can embrace enough of his love to realize he has our best at heart and if he’s not fulfilling what we desire, it’s because he desires something better.  But laying down ours long enough to recognize his, is a great challenge is this journey.

Finishing our Discussion on Finding Church Read More »

Why a Wayne Jacobsen Book?

I am appreciative to all of you who weighed in on my dilemma as to what to title my new book. There were a lot of great suggestions, and I appreciate being able to think this through alongside your input.  At this point I think I’m going to go with:  Beyond Sundays: Why Those Giving up on Organized Religion May Not Be Bad for the Church. Of course no title is final until the book is sent to the printers!

Now I want to ask for a bit more help.

And this is riskier, at least for me.

It realize this could be misinterpreted as an exercise in self-aggrandizement. I hope it isn’t that. Many books include endorsements from other authors and celebrities about the content of the book. I have in the past included “endorsements” from normal, every-day people instead of celebrities because that’s the lifeblood of this family. And endorsements of the content really help those who are not familiar with my stuff to have an idea whether or not a book is worth their time.

For this book, however, rather than commenting on the content, I’d like to have comments from readers about the author. In other words, if a friend of yours asked, why they might find a book by me helpful, how would you answer them?  How has God used them to encourage your journey or how do I come off as a person or writer?

Honestly this isn’t an attempt to get people to say a lot of nice things about me here, or on social media. I’m not fighting off an identity crisis and need people to stoke my ego for a few days. I just want to have something different in the front of the book.  You can post here, or send them to me personally. I’m planning to select about 20 of them to include in the front of the book, and maybe on the cover copy.

So, try to answer this question, “Why would I want to read a book by Wayne Jacobsen?” Keep them short. The more creative the better. Don’t overstate it. If you know me personally you might have something to say that will help the reader think beyond the book itself. Two or three sentences will do. Please include how you would like to be identified, e.g. “Pam a third-grade teacher in Wisconsin”, or “Matt, a father of two in Port Elizabeth, SA”.

I hope that makes sense. You have no idea how such recommendations open a door for people who are considering a book, but are not quite sure if the author is worth their time. I hope this is different enough to be a bit of fun for you.

 

 

Why a Wayne Jacobsen Book? Read More »

Finding a Different Rhythm and a Better Journey

Finalizing my latest book for publication, I ran across these two paragraphs. They express better than any other the transformation I see in people all over the world who move beyond religion and embrace a different way of living:

Following ritual and rules that others demand of you is still following law, even if we call them “New Testament principles.” God doesn’t transform us through obligation or meeting the expectations of others. The reason why many of us grew frustrated in religious settings is because they made promises they couldn’t fulfill. The harder we tried the emptier we felt. God has been inviting you to live in a new creation where his love transforms us in the deepest part of our soul.

Over this season you’ll learn to see through the manipulation of obligation, accountability, guilt, and fear and into a different rhythm that will allow you to live more at rest, aware of others, and free from the corrupting influences of this age. Instead of doing what others think you should do, you’ll be freer to discern his work in you and find yourself embracing his realities of grace, forgiveness, freedom, and generosity.

It all begins as you ask him to show you how deeply loved by God you are, then watching for how he shows you that reality. This is the trailhead that will lead you to greater freedom and fullness.

It’s a worthy journey, to be sure.

Finding a Different Rhythm and a Better Journey Read More »

Lifestream Classic: The Call of the Shepherd

Before there was Jesus Calling, I wrote this article about the kinds of things the Shepherd whispers to help people who had lost a sense of his voice, to find their way back to him.  Written in 2004 as part of a quarterly newsletter we used to send out, I was reminded of it in a conversation last week, so went back and sought it out.

As I read it again, I thought it might be worth sharing with those of you who haven’t seen it.  I hope it encourages you and helps tune your heart to hear the words he is always speaking to your heart.

Here’s how it starts:

Do you remember the first day you knew that I loved you? Do you remember how clean you felt and how light your heart was? The air seemed clearer, the colors of my creation brighter. You felt as if you had stumbled out of a dark, dirty cave and plunged headlong into a clean, cool stream. You drank in the reality of my presence and splashed with delight in my goodness.

In that moment nothing else mattered. You knew at the very core of your being that I was real, that I had great affection for you. Even in the face of dire circumstances, you were convinced that there was nothing we couldn’t walk through together. My love not only overwhelmed you, it also overflowed you with grace for others, even those who had wronged you. You woke up every morning in eager anticipation of what I’d show you that day. You delighted yourself in me as I delighted myself in you and each day became an adventure together.

Wouldn’t you like to come back to that space?  That’s not just where I wanted you to start. It was where I wanted you to live every day.

Read the rest here.

 

 

Lifestream Classic: The Call of the Shepherd Read More »