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I leave for 10-day trip to upstate New York and Pennsylvania tonight. It’s one of those all-nighters! A read-eye is definitely what it is for me, since I don’t sleep well on airplanes. But I am looking forward to joining the folks in Lowville, NY for a second time, and then head down for a school board convention in Pennsylvania for my BridgeBuilders work, before spending the weekend with old friends in the Harrisburg/Hershey area of PA!

Also I was contacted yesterday by someone needing help for a research project:

My name is Barb Orlowski. I am on the Doctor of Ministry program at A.C.T.S. Seminaries in Langley, B.C., Canada. In order to conduct the research necessary to complete my dissertation, I could use your help. I am conducting a survey among Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and have recovered from this experience. And, I am looking for pastors who have endeavored to provide spiritual guidance and help for people who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and who have ceased to be associated with those congregations.

If you fit either of these two groups of people and would consider helping her on her research, please email her here for more information.

Finally, I wanted to leave you with another response to my recent article, Friends and Friends of Friends in the newest edition of BodyLife. This is an interesting way to approach the subject as well. If Jesus wanted us to organize his church into institutions, why did he not leave us a detailed plan for doing so? His Father did that in the Old Testament. This is what my friend Kevin posed:

You know God was able to give Moses some very specific instructions on how to build the tabernacle. If He had wanted to, He could have done the same quite easily in defining what were the important sacraments, what day of the week we should meet, and what were the 17 key points to have in our statement of faith. Instead “He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”

With all that there were arguments and schisms in the NT church too. I guess many of Paul’s letters (those that survived and those that didn’t) addressed that.

So do you think we have been doing it all wrong for 1700 or so years now since Constantine?

I suppose the problem is that you can’t really define what is beyond definition in some sense. People want an ecclesiology that they can see, understand, control, or at least that is definitive, ordered, and structured in some sense. They see a pattern or system to everything in the created world and expect the same in the church. What you’re describing is far too dynamic. People want to see and know what their role is in all of this. After all these years, we still want a king of our own flesh, just like Israel and a defined kingdom. We want a simpler order, hierarchy, methodology, or system. The order within a fractal is too complex!

Anyway…just some thoughts. In some sense its very simple to grasp. In another, it’s way over our heads, and not wanted because it’s not within our control, nor does it have the appearance of order in a simple way.

I do think it is our need to control that causes us to gravitate toward human systems to somehow define or contain the body of Christ in a way we think we can manage. Such exhausting work! And I don’t think it took Constantine to do it for us. We have a track record in the early church in places like Galatia, Corinth and Colosse where the early believers went astray of the purity and simplicity of the gospel in their own need to achieve by human effort. It is a perilous road, no matter what the motivation!

I appreciate the way the Internet allows people to interact with things I write. Others add some great observations to this process. I’ve received some emails since the release of the new BodyLife and its lead article about Friends and Friends of Friends. It’s interesting that these both focused on fear and control as the reason we won’t trust Jesus to connect us the way he always desired to do.

This came from a long-time friend that has continued to look in a number of places to find some form of effective church life in a number of institutions:

I don’t know where to begin….was so impressed by what you had to say in the new newsletter. I have struggled with this issue for years and like you it was in front of us the whole time. Can’t tell you what a release I felt (and my wife as well). It is so hard to move away from the institution and the hold it can have on you. I recently watched a documentary on the Catholic Church in its attempts to deal with the sexuality of both male and female clergy, and the conclusion was simply that it was all done and justified on the basis of control, no matter what and that it will never change. It almost appears that the institution will do anything to keep people from fellowship with Jesus and with one another because of its fear of losing control even though lives will be destroyed. I can’t thank you enough for taking such a courageous stand.

And this came from a newer friend who has only recently left the institutional he served in for years. He was recently invited back to attend a ‘Defending the Faith’ class so he would know better how to “evangelize” young believers.

Why can’t we love people well enough that we just share our life with them in relationship instead of treating them as a project for coercion? You know why? It is because of fear. We are afraid we won’t know what to say. We are afraid that our not having an answer to their question will render them to eternal damnation. We are afraid we will say something wrong which make them walk away from Christ and they won’t ever pass that way again. We are afraid that a lot of their salvation is based on what I do.

But perfect love cast out all fear. If it really was about loving the people that Father puts in front of us each day, there is no fear of what to say, or what the results will be. I feel for those coercion projects that will soon be the victims of a new group of graduates from the “Defending the Faith” class. But then Father can make good of that too.

it’s amazing what Father uses. It really is! I’m grateful for how many times he’s used my immature ramblings to touch someone’s life and draw them closer to him. But like many of you, I’d much prefer Jesus flow out of my life because of how I’m responding to him, not in spite of it.

I flew back home today from six wonderful days all over the southern part of Alberta. I met some wonderful people and some incredible conversations and have returned home to a pile of backlogged emails and a full schedule for tomorrow. Bummer. Many people continue to be deeply touched by The Shack.

The team that helped put this together gets some incredible email every day at what God is doing in people’s hearts as they work through this little book. Of course, this is his doing, not the book’s, but it is fun to see how he’s using it as a catalyst to help people see a bit more clearly and live more freely in him…

This one from a friend in the U.S.:

Oh Wayne! I just finished reading The Shack! I am so emotional right now, and am using you to release some of them.

I cried, I saw…it is SO amazing! That which is in this book CONFIRMED so many things, I had thought I was the only one to believe them! But now I know. I KNOW! What He has been showing me all along this season is truth, and I had been a bit wondering if I dared to believe! But here it is, where someone else put those same things in writing!!!

What a relief! What a release! Wayne, I am so greatful to have had this….experience with all Three Persons of our God while the reading of this book, for truly He was with me, speaking, prodding, encouraging, pumping in and thus out of me His Life and Love.

Oh, and forgiveness. That, too, has happened to me, and I can’t even remember some of what I went through, it was deep. I feel like I was Mack! So much has happened to me…I believe I went on a journey with Him while reading this.!

The confirmation of it all…. I don’t even know what else to say.

This one from a sister in Australia:

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, for thinking outside the box, for not taking no for an answer, for bulldozing through the barriers of publishers so ordinary folk like us could read The Shack.

I have read it twice and as I pass it on to people I warn them it is like nothing they have ever read. Some people speak Spanish, some people speak English; Willie speaks the language of the soul, not unlike George McDonald!!!

What is it about it that brings so much healing and corrects the perspective of who my loving Father is? I have been thinking that it will make an impact in the life of our Father’s church around the world. Imagine all the people that are being freed and released from guilt. Imagine life changing choices being affected by love for Papa and not duty to a distant God. Windblown indeed!

Anything that helps people see God’s working in their own lives more clearly is a wonderful gift. I was with some people last night outside Edmonton and one woman talked about her reading of The Shack. She said that she had no idea that God could be such a God of grace and that it has sent her on a search to know God as he is and not how she has come to think of him only as a stern judge.

What a joy!

It is a quiet morning in Alberta Canada on a lovely early-fall day. I had some quiet moments to catch up on some email this morning. I found one that was titled ‘Quick Question’. I know that many others are asking the same question he is, so I thought I’d let you peek over my shoulder at this exchange:

A question I wanted to ask you when you visited here but forgot.

How do I get more of Jesus (and there are a raft of questions behind this – which are ‘solved’ if I knew my Saviour better). I feel I am walking around this mountain so many times the groove I’ve walked is soooo deep I can see over the edge – I’m desperate to stop.

Here’s what I wrote back: The question you ask may be quick in the asking, but it is not so quick to answer. Regretfully, I don’t think I have enough context to answer with any specificity for you and your situation. The reasons for feeling like you’re walking around the mountain in a deep groove could be many, and I have no idea which is yours.

But the simplest thing to say would be to get out of the rut. Whatever it is that you’re doing isn’t working, so perhaps it is time to stop doing at all.

Remember when the rich young ruler asked Jesus what must he DO? He got an interesting answer. In short, it is my conviction Jesus was trying to tell him that it is not in his doing at all. “what is impossible with man, is possible with God.” This is God’s doing not ours.

So perhaps you just wake up every morning and ask Father to make himself known to you. Whatever inkling he puts on your heart, follow! Make sure it is his inkling and not the religious performance voices of the past. If you hear nothing, don’t worry about it. Just keep asking. He may be needing to unwire some things in you as his person becomes clearer to you. This is a dance with him in the lead. Your part is to be flexible and follow as he takes you in hand and dances you through life. Yes, I realize that may sound frustratingly impractical, but I can assure you it is not. It is the way Father works. He wants us to know throughout that it is not our effort that earns his presence, but our simple willingness to simply be his child in the earth. If it takes months, even a year or more, do not despair. He is working in you at a deeper level than you see. You will in time feast on the fruits of it.

Dear Brother, ask him to do this work in you. Learn to relax in the reality that his love wants this for you more than you want it for yourself. He just told us to keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking and that would be enough for him to tear down all in us that resists him—our fears, doubts, shame, ego-needs and performance demands—and he will open the door of his heart and home very wide to receive us.

Whenever I’m feeling a bit distant from his reality, I follow this same advice, and find that somehow, somewhere, I’ve gotten more focused on my efforts than his grace and love. And in the simplicity of rest and surrender, I come alive again in his presence.

I truly hope that helps. Of course, you may need a brother to help you individually process the specifics of what is going on in you relative to his working. But if that is needed at this stage, he will provide that as well.

I hope that is helpful to him and many others of you. It is in

I’m off to Canada, Alberta this time, and have finally completed a new issue of BodyLife. We haven’t had a new one since February, because I’ve been way too busy with podcasts and book publishing.

The lead article is titled Friends and Friends of Friends and provided a chance for me to flesh out some of thoughts from this summer about how we understand the church that Jesus is building if it is based on relationships not institutions. This is Part 11 of our continuing series on “Life In the Relational Church”. There’s also some wonderful letters there from many of our readers who are also on some amazing journeys, as well as some new information on new things going on around Lifestream.

We hope this issue encourages you to keep to the journey God has put before you and draw you into his life and grace.

The new books are in, and I’m really pleased at how the new design and lay-out. As I’ve often said, this is the most significant book I think I’ll ever write and I’m glad now it is in a package that can help us connect to the folks who will be. I also added a new introduction and a new last chapter to help give some counsel to those who are seeing the concept, but haven’t yet embrace a connection with his presence for themselves.

After the books shipped today, I got an email from our account representative at the company who printed the new books. He wrote: “I just received my copy of He Loves Me. I see a lot of books as you can imagine but this is absolutely the best cover I have seen in years. Absolutely fantastic job. Congratulations!!!” My Rhode Island friend, Dave Aldrich of Aldrich Design did the cover. The photo here really doesn’t do it justice because the title is done in shiny, gold foil that can’t be seen here.

But what I love most is seeing people encounter God’s love through the book. When I was talking to the project manager at the plant that printed these books last week, she began to tell me how this book crossed her desk at a providential time. She had been going through a rough patch and when she saw the cover, she decided to thumb through the book. She was so overcome that the phone went silent for a while as she gathered herself. “I am so glad you’re my customer,” she said at the end. So cool! I love the way Father sneaks up on people and makes himself known, even in the middle of a print run. She’s taken a copy to read all the way through.

I also had some people send me some of their comments about this book that we’ve included in this new edition. I’m blessed at how this book has helped people embrace the reality of Father’s affection and discover how to live in his freedom:

When I read this book something in the deepest part of me calls out, “This is the Truth.” It is as if I’ve always known it, yet could never have given expression to such things, nor experienced them. What is written here fuels deep desire and makes living in Father’s love not just possible but absolutely essential. If I could, I would give a copy to everyone I know!

Nina Rice • Home maker, Dublin, Ireland

Understanding God’s love requires not a classroom lecture but a long bath. In He Loves Me, Wayne Jacobsen fills the tub and invites us to soak in real life, the inner life of the Trinity. “What Really Happened on the Cross?” is worth reading five or six times, then sinking quietly and deeply into its life-giving water.

Dr. Larry Crabb • Author of The Papa Prayer and SoulTalk

“For those of us who are longing to ‘live loved’, I cannot recommend a better follow-up to The Shack than this book. It is an exploration and adventure into the heart of the God we hoped was truly there, and who loves each of us in particular with an everlasting love.”

William Young • Author of The Shack

He Loves Me is one of those rare books in life that frees you to walk with the Father like never before. Its lessons become a part of your journey and stay with you for life like a good friend.

Bobby Downes • Christiancinema.com

This book is a refreshing alternative to all the religious stuff available! A heart warming read that sets you free to receive Jesus’ wonderful grace and love.

John Langford • Hislife.co.uk (Bournemouth, England)

This is my number one book recommendation for anyone struggling with guilt, shame, or the burden of religion. Besides the Scriptures themselves, I have seen this book touch more lives (including my own) than any other book in print.

Arnie Boedecker • Cornerstone Books

After reading the chapter, ‘The Most Powerful Force in the Universe,’ I said to my wife, “This chapter alone is worth twice the price of the book!” My wife and I have distributed this book throughout New England and the feedback from both old and new believers has been terrific.

Jack Gerry • Crossroads

You can order the book here.

I don’t know how much this affects other people, but since I’ve gotten a couple of questions on it, I thought there might be others interested in an answer. I got this question in an email the other day:

Do you have a brief opinion about whether or not Christ followers should be evaluating people they meet as either “safe,” or “unsafe” to hang out with? I was recently surprised at the number of Christians who subscribe to this thinking. Wouldn’t that be considered “shunning?”

Don’t you hate it when people turn something into another excuse to judge people and draw lines between those who are like them and judge those who are not?

The reason there is so much talk of this is because of an excellent book written a few of years ago by Cloud and Townsend called Safe People. There is a valuable reality, especially for young believers and people who have suffered abuse, to have a sense of who in their lives are ‘safe’ people with whom they can freely share their lives and know they won’t be manipulated, shamed or exploited. That can be very helpful in knowing who to open up their lives to and who to keep at arm’s length.

Is that the same as shunning? It depends on what we’re doing with the information. If I have a sense of safe or unsafe people around me that can be helpful, to the degree I’m right about them. If I’m wrong, I could be cutting myself off from people who in fact love me, perhaps just not in the way I want to be loved. But discussing my conclusions with others and communally identifying some people as ‘unsafe’ would be problematic from a number of perspectives. It would be gossip. It could lead to a groupthink about someone they do not deserve making it incredibly divisive and hurtful.

And wouldn’t it be true that the freer Jesus makes us, the less we’d need to be concerned about ‘unsafe people’. If I’m easily manipulated by people putting shame on me, it would be best to give that a wide berth for a season. However, as Jesus wins me to who he is and how he views me, I’d become far less affected by people’s attempts to shame me and then I wouldn’t have any problem being around them and look for ways to love them that would free them from their shame as well. So even our sense of safe or unsafe is contextualized by a number of factors our own make-up being key there.

Honestly I don’t hear a lot of people talking in these terms, except those who have been hurt in the past by abusive personalities. And for them, I think it an especially helpful tool in finding people who can help them heal in Christ instead of being wounded over and over again by abusive and manipulative personalities.

A friend sent me this link today and it is an eye-opening view of the statistics of health, mortality, income, and family size throughout the entire world. With humor and animated graphics Hans Rosling, of Gapminder.org provides statistics as you’ve never seen them presented before.

There’s no spiritual take-away here from the presenter, but for those concerned about the health and welfare of the world, there is much here to think, pray and ruminate on in days to come. The entire presentation takes about 20 minutes.

See presentation here.

Even if you find statistics incredibly boring, you will be transfixed on this presentation and you’ll come away more aware of the economic and cultural disparity in our world.

I saw this paragraph in an email sent to me today and I loved it:

We all feel ready again to be alongside & encourage our brothers & sisters – no matter what their particular preference/understanding is of ‘church’ or ‘mission’ – without feeling intimidated or insecure in our own journey. Our desire now is not just for ‘like-minded people’ to join us in our comfort zone (he never gave them to us, anyway!). In retrospect the ‘time out’ alone with him – this last 3 years or so – has been really vital, causing more & more of the religious stuff in our lives to wither, dry up and finally (we hope) to drop off!

I love the freedom that this journey brings to people, who no longer feel the need for like-minded people to join their comfort zone, but to be free to love people wherever they are in this journey. They now have the freedom to live openly and honestly without feeling intimidated or insecure. That’s awesome!

And I love the recognition of progress here. This is not a place they’ve come to as some applied intellectual conclusion. This is what Father has produced in them over time where they’ve just been with him letting him wither away all the religious stuff that really keeps us from loving people. This has brought them into a more spacious place of freedom, where it isn’t about what we need, but how we have been fitted to love others…

Cool!

Just got this yesterday and couldn’t resist passing it on—both for a reality check for us all, and for your prayers on behalf of these brothers and sisters in a Muslim-dominated area of Ethiopia. What an amazing story of the raw reality of the kingdom unfolding in people who from the first days of faith were encouraged to follow Jesus not the rules and rituals men have devised around Christianity.

I first shared Jamal’s story (not his real name) about a year ago. This is a man who came to Christ with the help of a friend of mine in his last few days of study at a university in the States, and returned to his homeland without any training in the ways of Christ much more than the simple admonishment to listen and follow him. If you missed it you’d be blessed to read Part I and Part II of his story. I’ve also changed every name in this story so that no one will be recognized. This is an almost unbelievable tale of courage, forgiveness and the ability of God to work his grace into the most despicable tragedies.

Too long it has been since sitting down I am to write to you. The more of this journey we are on with Jesus the less time we seem to have for such things. This is a sadness to me because your heart and words are always filled with the freshness of the morning rains in pouring out the Spirit to your family here in Ethiopia and to me the more.

Many things have happened here as God continues to weave his grace into the lives of the peoples here like a brightly colored thread becomes a seeing beauty though the hands of the master weaver. The ways in which Jesus is doing this are as many as the peoples here and I am thinking God is giving to me the knowing of why. If it were some pattern then we would be trying to make this with our own hands and following our tiny understanding of it instead of following the heart of our Jesus. He is always reminding us that we are like the ones who only see the back of the weavers shuttle and can not see the wonder of the cloth he is making until it is finished.

Yadid has gone to live with Jesus. We found his body broken by the side of the road. This is the work of evil in the hearts of those so blinded to the truth of Jesus that the evil pours through their hands to take his life so as to make him silent. Next to him we are finding these words he is scratching in the sand as the angels of Jesus are coming for him…”I am still trusting Jesus.” His tongue they have made still, but his voice in the hearts of the peoples can never be silenced. And it is calling many to the path of Jesus more loud and clear than ever he spoke living.

As I am taking his body to his mother I am feeling the heaviness of Jesus words when he is saying not to be thinking about what to say because God will put the words in our mouth only when it is his time when we have none to say. These words are like some of the noodles that are easy to eat, but hard on the stomach when they grow many times after the eating. But these words are also bringing back to me a life when it was as if every step we were carrying Yadid was draining the life out of me like the bottom of the dry river eats away the rain.

And so we are walking down the path to his mothers house and I am thinking I am not even going to speak to his mother because there are no words in my empty heart. Then I am hugging her for a long time and saying to her that we are sad and crying with her because we are not having our friend Yadid to be with us. We are crying for ourselves and for her but it is only the joy of knowing Yadid and what Jesus is doing in his life that is making us cry. The tears are coming from all the goodness we remember and all the joy that is leaving us when he is going to be living now with Jesus. But we are not crying for him because we are knowing that as the rain is washing away the dust of the desert land so the blood of our Jesus has washed away the sins and the old Yadid and the new Yadid that lived with us for a few years is now living with Jesus forever and we are happy when we know that we will see him again walking hand in hand with our Jesus. So many days we are crying with her and some laugher too as we tell the stories of Yadid in her house. I am not sure if I am saying anything right to her and I am hoping you can tell me if this is so. But to me it is the great kindness of our Jesus to give us the words that give life when the peoples are in tears.

We are asking all the peoples with you to be praying for Fabunni. When we are staying with the mother of our Yadid he is coming to the house crawling on his hands to kiss her feet and to ask her to take his life and let there be no more blood to be shed or to make of him a slave until he pays back what he has taken. He is telling us the story of how the evil is in his heart and he is one of the men who is beating our Yadid until he is dieing and he is the one taking him to the road where we are finding his body. And as he is driving, the dieing words of Yadid are telling him the story of Jesus and his great love for Fabunni. He is trying not to be hearing them but they are burning in his soul like a fire. How can this Yadid and the Jesus of his lips be forgiving Fabunni for this terrible thing he has done? This he is asking himself inside while he is trying not to listen. But what his ears will not hear his heart cannot forget and though he is thinking that these words will be the cause of his dying, they are making him alive with the life of our Jesus. He is thinking after leaving the roadside where Yadid is dying that he will forget these words in his heart, but he cannot. So he is falling down on the floor and crying to our Jesus and finding that he is One who answers death with life.

In the Bible he is reading about the tax man Zacheaus and how after Jesus is forgiving him he is asking the people to do this also and saying he will pay back four times what he has taken and so here is Fabunni kissing the feet of the mother of Yadid and saying he and his children will be the slaves of her until four of them are dead. This is too much for her to hear and so she is running into the house and saying to me, “What can I say when my heart is so empty and I am in fear that hate will fill it?” And I am saying to her that I have no words to fill her heart and that only Jesus can do this and so we are all praying for her with our hands on her.

Still Fabunni is laying outside crying with his face in the dirt. I am thinking to myself that Jesus must hurry before he runs out of tears for he cannot bear the emptiness inside himself. So inside many are praying and some are singing to Jesus for a time seeming much longer than it is. Then the mother of our Yadid is going to Fabunni and lifting him up from kissing her feet and saying to him that once her son Yadid was doing evil things that made her lay on her bed and cry many tears into her pillow until Jesus is finding him and giving him a new life and making him a brother. And she is remembering when Yadid is coming to her house to tell her the story of Jesus and how her heart is living again and he is taking away her tears.

And if the words of Jesus from the lips of Yadid are giving life to Fabunni as they have to her, then Fabunni is now the brother of Jesus and Yadid also. And if this is true then Jesus is giving her another son for the one who is taken away and that no tears she is crying for the missing of Yadid can take away this joy of Jesus giving to her another son. These are like the pains of giving birth to a child which are all forgotten when you see his face. And she is saying to everyone in her village that Fabunni is the brother of Yadid and a gift from our Jesus and this is how he is to be treated. And we are saying that this is a work of the heart that only our Jesus can do and everywhere now Fabunni is telling the story of Yadid and Jesus he is working in the hearts of the peoples who are hearing it as only he can do.

And as our hearts are filled with praise to our Jesus we are sneaking a peak at the other side of the cloth he is weaving before us.

Wow! I’m so touched by the grace that unfolds in this story and the perspectives of people just living in the simple reality of his unfolding grace instead of the baggage of theology that can be so distracting.

“Father, be with these dear people today. Give them life and grace and wisdom beyond their own. Surround them with your life today and continue to be revealed in them. In the name of your Son, Jesus.”

Pass it on! The link is “http://lifestream.org/blog/?p=464”