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It’s always a bittersweet experience to let go of a book to the printer that has been in your heart for so long. In one sense, you want to keep editing and fussing with it to make it perfect, and on the other you have to remember it is but a snapshot in time and at some point you have to let it go to be shared with the world. This week we sent our latest book to print. Because of the special nature of this book it will be a couple of months before we have the printed copies on hand.

Over a year and a half ago I met an award-winning artist, Murry Whiteman, who had compiled two books of paintings drawn from the Gospels. I was moved by many of them and wanted to know if the books were for sale so i could buy them for a ton of people I know for Christmas. (Some of those pictures you can see at left.) He said they weren’t available yet and wanted my counsel on self-publishing them. And then he asked if I would be open to writing words to go with his art. I hesitated, unsure that I had the time or ability to write words worthy of his art, but told him I would consider it and asked if he would be open to Brad helping as well. He was.

And thus Brad and I began the task of bringing words to this art and trying to capture the reality of Jesus living in time and space as a human and experiencing all of life as we do. We finally completed that process over the weekend and soon this book will be available. It is 128 pages of art and prose that seek to illuminate Jesus and how he was truly a man like no other.

Last week on vacation I read a bit of it to my seven-year-old granddaughter as I showed her the paintings on my computer. Keep in mind that this is not a children’s book. We wrote it for adults, but I hoped there would be enough here to engage Aimee in that story as well. Not only was she transfixed by the art and listened intently to each story, but so did her three-year-old sister. After each one Aimee had so many questions about Jesus, whose child he was, and why he came to this earth. Each night she was excited to read more and wouldn’t let me stop on any night with just one. “Read this one,” she’d say pointing to the next one.

I am incredibly excited about this book finally being completed. Couples will enjoy reading the brief vignettes as a devotional together and others might use it in their own personal study and reflection.I think it will capture people’s hearts and be a discussion-starter as it sits on a home coffee table, or adorns the waiting room of an office. When we had a copy of the proposed cover sitting at a table in a restaurant as Brad, Murry, and I went over the book no one seemed able to walk by the table without zeroing in on the cover and pausing to read it.

We’ll have information soon about ordering a copy of the book. I just wanted you to know it will be available soon and I think it will make a well-appreciated gift for those on your Christmas list. It is called, A MAN LIKE NO OTHER: THE ILLUSTRATED LIFE OF JESUS. It will be published by Windblown Media and will be available through our offices at Lifestream as well as many other outlets.

Windblown Media • Hardback • Full Color • 8.5 x 11 • 128 Pages • $24.99 • Available in October

If you read this page frequently you’ll know how incredibly powerful it has been for me to grow to embrace the Almighty God of the universe as my Abba Father. These words continue to work their way into my heart with ever-greater reality:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15).

Of all the discoveries in my life over the past 15 years, none has meant more and none has been more powerful in reshaping my life. I am blessed to find God as a tender Father through the twist and turns of my journey in this age. Instead of being frustrated at him when he doesn’t give me what I want or trying to find the right prayer or bargain for God to give me what I think is best, I am finding the joy of simply learning to trust him as a tender Father.

I resonate with John’s words:

“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” I John 4:13

I can imagine John in his twilight years reflecting on his entire spiritual journey in that simple phrase. I hope when I am older I am able to say with the same sense of resolve. As for now, I am simply learning this reality each day. There are some places in my life where I live truly loved, and their are other spaces in my heart that struggle to believe it’s true. At the end of my days, I’d want to say them with such finality as he did here. To trust God as my Abba, puts him in every situation with me and even in the difficult ones he doesn’t fix the way I want, I know he is never against me. Even when in sternness he disciplines me to live more freely in him, or asks of me more than I think I have to give, it is my Abba behind it all and that makes it easier to submit to his ways.

A big part of God’s instruction to me in this arena has been in my emotions and love for my own children, and now for my growing brood of grandchildren. i can’t believe how much I loved them, right from birth. I love the relationship I have with each of them and how much they enjoy being with their grandpa. I know the tenderness I want them to feel in me, and the fierceness that would protect them at all costs. A year or so ago, my daughter took the above picture of me when I was so deep in a conversation with Aimee that I wasn’t even aware that her mom was taking pictures. When I saw it the first time, my heart leapt. It has become the picture that illustrates “Abba” for me–a child quietly at rest in the arms of someone she completely trusts.

Last week as Sara and I were returning home from a vacation in the nearby Sierras, we stopped to have lunch with some long-time friends. As we walked into their dining room she directed my attention to the wall on which hung her watercolor adaptation of that picture. It took my breath way. They said it was a gift and we returned home to hang it on our wall.

Here it is:

Every time I look at not only do I get to celebrate that special bond that Aimee and I share, but even more special is the reminder that the God who made heaven and earth delights in being my Abba. There is no safer place to be, even at my worst, than on his lap, wrapped in his incredible love. There every difficult thing in my life fades in the absolute wonder of who he is and the relationship he wants to keep carving out with me.

And that is as true for every one of you reading these words.

I am back from a semi-vacation. Unfortunately I had to work on some of the DVD videos for The Jesus Lens, but I did get some rest and play in as well. The most important thing I could update you on is the need in Kenya. I heard from my friend Michael this week. They were able to repair the transmission on the car with the generous donations some of you have sent. Thank you so much on their behalf, mine, and I suspect even the Father’s!

But he sent me another email that strikes to the core of my heart:

What is happening here for hunger we have never experienced before. For more and more people, the same thing is happening. Many families are running for finding refuge just to get one meal. Your prayers are very important we don’t know what to do but just to lift in the mighty hands of God. May the Lord bless you as we pray for one another.

The drought in the horn of Africa has already driven a needy nation into a starving one. Food prices have risen astronomically because it is so scarce. My heart goes out to my brothers and sisters there and we’ll be sending them an additional gift to help alleviate the suffering. If you’d like to join me in sending something to help, you may do so through Lifestream, or any of the other charities looking to bring relief to that corner of the world.

We appreciate so much those of you who have already helped us here. If any of you would like to give to the people in Kenya, or simply want to find find out more about our ongoing touch with these dear brothers and sisters in Kenya, you can read this earlier blog or see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Thank you for your love, prayers, and concern for these dear people.

Sara and I are going to take a much needed vacation for the next two weeks and as such we regret that the Lifestream office will be closed during that time. We will still have access to email and voice mail, but will probably not be responding to anything that isn’t critical.

I hope you can appreciate that we’re a pretty simple operation here that doesn’t have a staff to fill-in when we’re gone. We may be able to ship some orders during the second week, but that has not been all worked out yet. We’ll be back on August 15, however, and will be able to assist you at that time. Please forgive us for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Sara and I are off to North Carolina in the morning, for a weekend retreat and then a special gathering with fellow-travelers in Charlotte on Sunday night. I thought I would leave you with this before I go:

I don’t often say this about a book, but I will this time. If you are the parent of a child who seems like a prodigal to you, wandering in a far off place from God, go get this book! But even if you don’t have such a child, go get this book! It is a powerful read of a father’s love for a rebellious son. If you’re experiencing anything similar his journey will surely encourage your own. But it is more than that. It unveils the relentless love of the Father for all of us as he continues to seek us out in the places we get lost and restore us in his grace and mercy.

I talked more about this book on last week’s podcast if you want to hear it. It is toward the end. This book is an engaging read. Remarkably well-written, honest, and vulnerable this book describes the ongoing pain of having a child wander far from the faith of his father, and a father’s love that keeps believing the best in the face of such brokenness. And through it all he discovers a depth of God’s love for himself in his wandering moments.

In addition, Dan is a friend and has been for 15 years or so. But that’s not why I’m recommending his book as many of my other friends might attest. For me to recommend a book here, I have to be convinced that it is a really good read and that a many of you will find this book helpful for your own spiritual journey. This is all that and more. It is deeply touching and wonderfully encouraging, even though they story has not yet ended. There is a spirit of triumph in it, even though Dan’s son is still sorting through the damage in his life from alcohol and PTSD from his service in Iraq.

This book is not available in stores, but you can order it from Amazon.com or from other online retailers.

Here is some added info from the back of the book:

Hope is a butterfly
Fear is a stone
As the father waits
For his son to come home.

For anyone who has loved a prodigal child, here is a voice in the night that says you are not alone. ‘The Butterfly and the Stone’ is a story of fear and hope on a journey that leads from the safety of home to Iraq, and home again to face a fiercer enemy: post-traumatic stress and addiction. Woven throughout is God’s love… found in a most unexpected place…

You can find out more at Dan’s website, StoneButterfly.net.

The life of God continues to be shared through the people I met with in Kenya. A recent report from Michael about the love of God growing among them and that they are increasingly shifting from large-group lectures, to small-group conversations to help people truly learn to live loved and not just hear sermons about it. I’m really blessed with this change.

Here’s some of what Michael wrote me this week:

Thank you very much for the great work that you are doing for the Lord especial the work of sending the gospel of Christ across the world. As I shared with you earlier that we are sharing with groups and just training them to understand God’s love to every body. So I have been receiving more invitations from the brethren here in Kenya and other part of East Africa, to go myself or send the team to help them about this revelation. I thank God some of the trip I have been sending the team a small group of people to go and help and some of the group I have been joining them. And I have seen really the hunger from the hearts of people. And yesterday Sammy my son he asked me that why this truth has been hidden for long generation and why God is revealing now?

So we have been visiting some areas where we have been meeting with local brethren ready to hear what God might having for them and very area we have been going it so fruitful and high expectation of understanding. Sometimes we break in the meetings and allow people to share among themselves. They can questions because many people were bound by religion system so some times we pray more so that people may have inner understanding. May the Lord be praised and honored for His people to get the true revelation from Him.

In Mt Elgon, we went for villages in high mountains where many people have been died during the land clashes and you may get hundreds of women who are widows and the young single mothers. My dear brother, let us continue praying for this people as God provides such time of this let us show them that they are really under the care of God no matter they may be alone but they are with |Jesus who cares the lives, there is a lot of every kind of suffering in this area but God is the solution of very thing. Among the hundreds of children we managed to take only just two but we promised that has the father provides we shall help where necessary.

We want to thank you very much for your support along with the team for the past years to help these people in relief. (We are looking for ways to help) many widows become self-reliant through income-generating businesses in teams of ten. The hunger has become very worse in the area but God is only the solution for this, you can also pray with the widows of Mt. Elgon that God may give them clear understanding. May the Lord bless you as we pray for one another.

Michael

Here, too, are some recent pictures that they sent:

A recent outreach to Mt. Elgon to help people learn to live in the love of the Father.


Learning to pass along the life of love through conversations instead of lectures


Praying


The broken transmission damaged on a trip to the highlands of Mt. Elgon

So God’s grace is growing among them, but so are the needs in this distant land. News reports continue to talk about the famine and subsequent starvation of many people in the horn of Africa, which includes this part of Kenya. The crops have failed, costs have soared. Every time I write to them I’m helping them learn how to trust Jesus for his provision and not just rely on gifts from Lifestream. They are learning to do that. At the same time, I can’t help but feel like I have a stake in this unfolding story since God has knit my heart with theirs. All we can do is make the need available to others and see what God provides for them.

There are three critical needs now:

We appreciate so much those of you who have already helped us here. If any of you would like to give to one of these needs, or simply find out more about our ongoing touch with these dear brothers and sisters in Kenya, you can read this earlier blog or see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560-1 Newbury Rd #313 • Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Thank you for your love, prayers, and concern for these dear people.

We are getting settled back home after an incredible trip first to Spain to share with believers there, and then to Rome where we took a walk back through time to the beginning stages of western civilization. We started our trip there among the ruins of ancient Rome—the Colosseum, Palatine Hill where the rulers built their palaces, and the Roman Forum where they ruled. Later in the trip we visited the Vatican and St. Peters, a underground excavation of a 4th century basilica for early believers, and St. John’s Cathedral that was near our hotel and was the first seat of the papal authority for the Catholic Church, and it continues to be so even though St. Peter’s Basilica is nearer the Vatican.

As someone fascinated by human history experiencing these sights firsthand was amazing on a number of levels, many of which were conflicting. I could admire what mankind was able to create in ancient times, but that would be consumed by the fact that they could only do so by conquering people in far-off lands, stealing their treasures for themselves, and bringing them back as slaves to do their work. At home they created a society that sustain an elite class of the privileged at the cost of keeping everyone else impoverished. As long as they pacified 99% of the population with food and entertainment, the 1% could continue their privileged lives with little consequence.

To help me make sense of these things I saw there I also took two books along to read: Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire by Simon Baker and History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present by John O’Malley. I am still reading those now and am finding them fascinating, in both the achievements and atrocities of mankind and how in most cases how those two are directly linked.

What amazed me was seeing the juxtaposition of the pinnacle of pagan culture (Rome) and what is supposed to be the crowing glory of Christendom (the Vatican). But they are exactly identical in what they loved and treasured and in what they were willing to do to establish their authority and to manipulate the common man. In fact one could say that the priorities of the Roman Empire didn’t vanish with the fall of the culture, they simply rolled over into the defining realities of the hierarchical structures and facilities of the “church” in that day. Whether it was a small group of Romans wanting to conquer the known world to satiate their desire for power and extravagance, or a small group of religious leaders wanting to do the same thing. Moving from the Roman Forum to the Vatican it was obvious that both cultures were created and sustained by the same preoccupations with:

And through it all one phrase kept coming to mind: “What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.” (Luke16:15) That’s what Jesus said to the Pharisees about their attempts to serve both God and mammon, and he gave them a firm warning that mammon would always win that contest. And so it has, even down to the present day.

As a culture we are still impressed with magnificent-if-gaudy buildings or fascinated with celebrity. It’s the same worldly vices reborn in our generation. So many seek to find significance through fame or finances even if they have to trample on others to gain their illusion of success. It all begins with the simple deception that God’s gifts make me better than, more deserving than, more right than the people who live around me. It takes that delusion to treat people the way you have to treat them to be at home in the upper reaches of society. And even those that don’t have that kind of “success” either spend their life striving to find it, or live frustrated with God that he didn’t make them as successful or as well-known as they think they should be.

What saddens me most here are those who expound the message of grace but don’t know how to live in it for others. They take advantage for themselves, but don’t know how to extend it to the closest people to them. Jesus reminded his first disciples not to exalt any person above others, and certainly not to place themselves there. “You have one Father and you are all brothers,” he reminded them. And, “The greatest among you is the servant of all.” Once our sense of success is based in the world’s priorities of wealth, visibility, and success we have already traded Jesus’ kingdom for another, no matter how much lip service we pay to his. God’s gifts are not for personal privilege but for serving others.

After seeing the vanity and emptiness of so much opulence and false notions of power and influence, I came away even more committed to the wonderful simplicity of relationships with others as brothers and sisters, in the simple wonder of God’s gifts and graces imparted as freely to others as he has done so for me.

“What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.”

“We finished up our retreat in Malaga on Sunday afternoon with a bit of sharing. If you’d like to see some pictures from our time with a smaller group under a fig tree, you can see it here. This discussion began with a small group of women under a fig tree who wanted to ask more pointed questions about how to help people who have suffered great abuse or pain connect with the reality of a Father’s love they had never known. I reminded them that this is God’s job not ours. We can encourage, we can help share the Truth, but it is God’s to reveal his love, even through periods of great pain. And he does it so well. I encouraged them to ask the people they are helping in turn to ask the Lord to show them his love. This is God’s work, not ours to prove by logical arguments.

As we talked the discussion grew as more people joined in. Eventually we started debriefing from the weekend. They wanted to hear Sara’s story and how God brought her into a new place of freedom. It was wonderful and connected with so many. Then we talked about how each of us can relax more into God’s freedom every day.

As is the case with so many stops I make, it is difficult to leave those God knits our hearts to even over a weekend. On Monday our hosts took us to Gibraltar and some time on the mountain with a group of monkeys. On Tuesday we flew to Rome to meet up with our friends from Switzerland to spend some days in fellowship as we explore the city of Rome. Yesterday we saw the Spanish Steps and the area around Trevi Fountain. This morning we wandered around the Coloseum together and explored the Roman Forum and archeological digs on Palatine.

Tomorrow we are headed to the Vatican. I’m looking forward to it, even though it will bring a number of conflicting emotions to bear. Breathtaking art, amazing architecture from long ago, and all of that provided for by an often-oppressive religious institution that accomplished these things with so-called offerings to God. Tomorrow ought to rock!

Yesterday we drove from Madrid to the south coast near the city of Malaga for a weekend retreat. (The picture at left is from our tour in downtown Madrid.) We are on the Mediterranean Sea, and even got to dip our feet in last night. This morning we had one of those amazing discussions about the cross, and eyes were opening around the room like I rarely witness. People were in tears, and even my translator could hardly contain himself. God just dumped an amazing amount of his grace into the room.

I sat there amazed, knowing that this was a very special moment in some people’s lives and that it had nothing to do with me, but what God wanted to share with some people. When we dismissed at the end not a soul moved. Finally one person said, “We are undone!”

And it was true. I am amazed that God lets me be part of stuff like this. But we have truly been taught an inadequate view of the cross that makes God the angry judge, rather than the loving Abba. Some people love it that way and will fight to the death to preserve what they believe to be an adequate view of God. The cross was not God crushing an innocent victim, but substitutionary atonement in the truest sense. Jesus took our place in the healing of our sin and shame, so that we could draw near to his Father, our Father, without fear and without shame. It is truly the most amazing story.

Sara and I landed safely this morning in Madrid, Spain. This is our first trip here and yet we got off the plane to familiar faces—people we met in the States a little over a year ago. We’ll be gathering with people tonight and tomorrow in Madrid, even though people have come from all over Spain, Portugal, and even France. Oh, yeah, we’ll also be working through jet lag since we only got a couple of hours sleep on the flight in.

Tomorrow we are going to see a bit of downtown Madrid and then Friday morning we will be driving five hours south to Malaga on the south coast. We will be gathering for a weekend Then for the weekend we will be gathering in Malaga on the south coast. If you’d like to join us you can get the details here.

Then next Tuesday we’ll be moving on to Rome, Italy to meet some of our dear friends who will arrive from Switzerland and to sample the sites and sounds of the city, it’s history and nearby Vatican City.