Wayne and Sara share from their 35 years of marriage and how they’ve found a way to grow closer together through the twists and turns of life and each other’s journey. (Recorded at the Christian Life Center in New London, PA. The audio has some flaws in it, which are in the original master. We apologize for the problems, but knew many people wanted to hear us share this part of our journey.)

We are unveiling the first video in our Engage series on this blog. Eventually these will move to their own page on our new website, but that has been delayed briefly.

Engage is my attempt to equip and encourage people to explore their own relationship with God. Unfortunately, many people who want to know God default to religious ways of trying to connect with him, but get discouraged when those attempts don’t work. I realize that a video series is not the ideal way to do this and that it would be far better to have the love and conversation of an older brother or sister near them who is enjoying the journey and willing to help others do so as well without loading them down with a bunch of religious rules and rituals. But for those who don’t know anyone like that it was on my heart to offer these short video encouragements to help others on a relational journey of knowing God. My hope is that it would also provide an example for others who want to help people on this journey but haven’t known how to do it.

Over the last twenty years I’ve taken note of the kinds of counsel that have helped people find greater freedom and reality in their own relationship with God. These are some of the things people can do and talk about as they encourage others to see how God is taking shape in them. You can use these videos for group discussion or share them with others. They are copyrighted so others will not abuse them for profit, but you have our permission to distribute them freely as you desire. Like The Jesus Lens, these videos will be available free of charge and with our prayers that many will find them helpful as they relax into a relationship with God.

We affectionately refer to this as the anti-discipleship approach because so many have the idea that discipleship is teaching people how to build a relationship with God, which usually involves a heavy dose of doctrine and religious activities. In truth, discipleship isn’t about you building a relationship with Jesus; it’s about Jesus building one with you and you coming to recognize how he is doing that. He wants to draw you into his Father’s heart and teach you the Father’s ways.

What that means is the videos are just a catalyst for your own time learning to enter into an engagement with the Abba Father. We’ll post new videos every couple of weeks to give you plenty of time between them to explore how God wants to engage you in your own heart and day. As you focus on him, let him make himself known to you and show you how to participate in an ongoing conversation with him in the realities of your own life. As best you can, relax in the process. It does take time for him to disconnect the frenzied input of the world around you, and the performance-based approach of religion, and free you to relax into his reality in a way you can recognize and enjoy.

I am hoping Engage fosters a conversation as well that will incorporate your questions and insights into this process. Please feel free to use the comment section on this blog, and the comment section of the web page when we get it set up, to ask questions you’re encountering on this journey. And if you have a question you think will also interest others, and can record it on a video camera, please send us the recording and we’ll see about using it on future videos. I’m hoping at least the first time through this will be a bit like a class where we can discover together what will most help people who want to engage God and his life.

Here’s the first one. If these are helpful I will continue with future videos every two weeks or so. The only way this works is if they encourage you to spend some time exploring your own connection to God and learn to find your way into the conversation God wants to have with you.

If the video does not show above in your browser, you can view the video here.

I am also including the audio version in the podcast feature of this Lifestream blog. You can access it below or you can also subscribe to audio postings on this blog via iTunes.

For those who follow this page and The God Journey, we’re having quite a bit of discussion about relationships and community. Learning to live in the love of the Father, and then out of that love to others opens the door for the kinds of relationships that we crave and that God designed us for. But these kind of friendships don’t happen quickly and can’t be manufactured by human engineering. They are deeply rooted in a heart God is healing and allows us to engage others with freedom and joy.

I wrote this over a year ago and found it in an old file today. Here are some things I have learned about relationships over the course of my life:

Friendships that are filled with love, grace, and shared wisdom are the best treasures we’re given in this life—those that are filled with laughter, that speak truth graciously, and that serve each other generously. They will last a lifetime and are more valuable than gold.

If you value any thing more than your friends, your friendships won’t last. Bet on it.

It takes two people and a significant amount of love, grace and time to build a friendship in which the glory of God can be revealed. It only takes one of those people and a careless act of betrayal to destroy it.

Failure alone won’t end a friendship. Abandonment will.

No matter how broken a relationship is, it can always be reconciled if both people are willing to invest the time and effort to own each other’s story. But the process demands a healthy dose of honesty, tenderness, and openness to see things as they are, not how we want them to be.

Real relationships are not about just being nice. There is no relationship without authenticity and truth. Light and love travel together, as painful as that might be at times. But that’s a glorious mix.

Learn the wonder and power of forgiveness so that other people’s failures don’t become your issues.

Too many people want a relationship only for what they can get out of it, and will not always be there to help others when the friendship asks something of them.

Your coping mechanisms might have saved you in trauma when you were younger, but they will subvert healthy friendships now. That’s why wholeness is worth fighting instead of simply passing your pain on to others.

If someone is making accusations about another’s motives to you, you can bet that they are also doing it about you to someone else.

When the conversation shifts from how we share together what God gives, to demanding for ourselves that which we think we deserve, that friendship has been sacrificed on the altar of selfish ambition and vain conceit. It’s a really bad trade.

Those who give up on a friendship, had to never know the joy of that friendship to begin with.

Most people are users, pretending a friendship to benefit themselves. But users won’t change without being loved, even if it takes a number of discarded friendships for them to learn that. Love them anyway, just do it with your eyes open!

When accusations enter a friendship before the person ever sits down to discuss his or her concerns, you can be sure that gossip has had its course and the accusations will be distortions at best, or outright lies at worst.

It’s easy to stab a friend in the back, because they are trusting you not to. Betrayal is an act of cowardice.

When people give up on a friendship without even a meaningful conversation where they seek to hear as much as be heard, you can be pretty sure it was always a one-sided relationship to begin with.

To live inside of lies you have to block out any voice that challenges your thinking. When you live in the truth you need no such protection.

My dad taught me that my word is my bond. If you say it you do it. If you cease to respect your own word, you’ll gather no respect from others. And don’t confuse someone’s love with their respect. They are two separate realities. You can love someone you don’t respect, but the great friendships are filled with both.

Proverbs says that telling lies about someone is an act of hatred, no matter what excuse you give yourself.

Those you love the most, can hurt you the deepest. Keep loving anyway!

The best counsel I know for the kind of deep friendships that spawn true community come from Paul’s words in Philippians 2:1-4- “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” No man or woman can live that way by their own efforts. It takes a rich and real relationship with Jesus to be transformed enough by him to have the freedom to live like that.