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BE UNSTOPPABLE!

/ Brenda from the Bridge / 1 Comment

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” Josh. 1:9

I have wrestled throughout the day whether to post or not post.  To be honest I wasn’t “Feeling it”.  I wanted to lay in bed today and let the world slip.  But a small voice kept whispering into my despair,  “Get up. Get moving. You are going to be OK.  I have you.”

The roller coaster of human emotion that is the Pandemic COVID19, has made me a bit unsettled today. So, I took my own advice this after noon, and stopped listening to the voice of fear and panic and I breathed in Jesus and breathed out His peace.

These are unsettling times.  The prevailing winds are panic and fear.  But Ladies and gentlemen, we have the power to CHANGE THE NATURE OF THE WIND!  Our strength does not come from how much toilet paper we have, or how many pounds of meat we hoarded.  OUR STRENGTH COMES FROM THE LORD…HIS JOY dismatles fear  in a second!  HIS LIGHT bursts forth and decimates panic.

It is not time to shrink back in fear and woe.  It is time to be STRONG AND COURAGEOUS.  When everything in us screams, “You can’t handle this storm.” Breathe in Jesus and Breathe out, “I AM THE STORM!!!” Let’s change the very nature of the prevailing winds from fear and panic, lack and greed; to that of LOVE and JOY , COMMUNITY and UNITY!

Stop looking at the grocery store as if it will save you.  Take a breath and recognize where your help comes from!

Psalm 121 1

I lift up my eyes to the hills– where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

The Lord is not shocked over what is happening.  He is standing in the midst of this with us.  Together (with the Lord) we are UNSTOPPABLE!

A Professional Meetinger No More

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment
Photo of Man Leaning on Wooden Table

So I spent 19 of the last 36 hours in meetings of one kind or another. It feels like every last ounce of glory and strength has been drained out of my body. Amanda and Brenda are no better off. Brenda was out even longer than I was by about 6 hours.

When people used to ask me what I did I used to tell them I was a “professional meetinger”. That period of my life was annotated by a long series of meeting minutes and action items I had to get done in order to build the Kingdom of God.

The last 36 hours has made me realize that I am not a “professional meetinger” anymore. I still have a deep passion for the Kingdom of God but I realize my job is not to “meeting” the Kingdom into existence any more (if it ever was). I am going to try really hard not to meeting myself into a stupor ever again.

Today when people ask me what I do for work. I am not exactly sure what my answer will be…artist, prophet, pastor, caregiver? What I do know is that I will never again tell people I am a “professional meetinger”. That is a part of my past. It doesn’t fit me anymore.

Dance Your Rhythm

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

What do you do when life shifts from march time to a waltz? What do you do when the rest of the world is still marching and you’re waltzing? What do you do when the rest of the world starts noticing that you aren’t marching to their rhythm anymore?

Since returning from The Philippines, my life rhythm has changed radically. There are days when the world still pulls at me and I am tempted to march again. But, most days I am pretty much settled into the slower waltz rhythm that was put on me by God at the end of 2019.

The rhythm is pretty repetitive: My morning’s go one way. My afternoons go another and my nights…well they are still a work in progress but even they have done some major shifting. The framework around all of it seems to be breakfast, lunch and supper.

I am not good at the waltz rhythm yet. I haven’t got all the nuance down, but clunky as I might look, I have changed pace. What I know is that I will not be going back to marching for a while.

People are starting to notice that I am not on the same foot as them anymore. I am OK with that. Everyone else may need to march. I need to dance in order to accomplish what God needs me to do at Cornerstone.

I was praying about it this morning and I felt impressed by the Lord that much of what I am waltzing through is preparation and discovery for the next phase of ministry.

No I am not leaving Cornerstone, people, so don’t worry. God has made it clear that I have work to do in this city still.

But God is changing the nature of the ministry I do. I have known that for a while and have been very open with the whole church about this. He started changing me three years ago and He isn’t finished yet. The change is going at His pace. As with everything else at the church, God has it firmly in hand and He is in charge of the results.

Woman and man dancer latino international dancing

So…What do you do when life shifts from march time to a waltz? What do you do when the rest of the world is still marching and you’re waltzing? What do you do when the rest of the world starts noticing that you aren’t marching to their rhythm anymore?

You figure out how to be the best dancer you can be …and brother you dance!

Man Doing Airborne Stunt

Control

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

In this season of intensive prayer leading up to and including Lent, I have journaled many personal revelations/ realizations about my life which I think may mean something to the larger body of Christ.

Here is one thought which came to me on January 31 regarding the idea of “CONTROL”:

It is time for me to learn I do not control God. It is time for me to start allowing God to control the outcomes of my life. So many times, my service to God, my prayer to God, my devotional life before God is about me trying to control the outcomes of my life. My religion, my relationship to God is too often about me achieving some personal goal rather than me totally surrendering to God no matter what the outcome of that surrender is. This insistence on control is a very great sin.

It is time to embark upon the great and terrible and mysterious adventure with God. It is time to resign myself to the current of God’s river and to allow it to carry me away where it will.

Do you ever feel like you are trying to control God?

Empty

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

During this corporate season of prayer I have filled my journal with hundreds of entries from my personal prayer times. Here is one of the thoughts I have been contemplating since Jan. 26.

“We are only empty vessels. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can stop trying to accomplish things in our own power and we can allow God to fill us and flow through us with His power. In His power we can accomplish eternal things if impossible magnitude.”

I am aware that God is bringing me into a place where I recognize my powerlessness. This sense of my own fragility is the key to operating in the supernatural power of the Living God.

Are you becoming aware that you are not equal to the task in front of you? What is your answer to it?

Ready! Set! Draw!

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

Morning came early today. By 6:30 I had showered, walked and fed the dogs, had breakfast, done laundry, got the bills ready for mailing and loaded the car for the dump run. By 7 I was at prayer in the church and by 8 I was loading the car with my travel piano in preparation for the funeral I am performing this afternoon. By 9 I was peeling potatoes for the potato salad I am taking to the funeral. Then, I headed off to the bank to make a deposit and to withdraw money for mom’s daily needs for the next few weeks.

Brenda had a great night in Southington CT. Two more people gave their hearts to Jesus last night and she got to pray with a man who has had five strokes and lost his voice.

That is the power of story. That is the power of art launched into conversation.

I think it is for this reason I have felt over the last several months that I need to spend more time in two things: Prayer and creation of art.

Sometimes I just practice my hand at simple things I think I will have to draw a lot

This image I actually saw in a vision I had before one of our recent board meetings.

I am learning God has skills He would make available to us if we would both seek Him and practice. These skills remain latent in us until we need them and choose them for the purposes of His kingdom! Who knows but maybe this is one of the reasons for the shifts going on in my life right now. I am being called out of certain things in order to help my mother. That said perhaps I am also being called into other things by the shifting which will make me of greater use for God’s kingdom.

Developing

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

My motto for this year is SHIFT YOUR FOCUS TO WONDER. In sharing that with my artist’s group back in January one of our artists wondered what God meant by wonder… that is, was I supposed to shift my focus towards looking at awe-inspiring things? Or was I supposed to shift my focus to ponder things more?

Now that I am in my third month of “SHIFTING”, I think God meant a little of both. On January 13th my sister and I embarked on a 10 day journey to The Philippines to attend my son’s marriage to Kristine Bernadette Causing Barrameda.

Those 10 days filled me with awe for sure.

I was awestruck by the fact that I was being privileged to witness such a sacred moment in the life of someone I had actually helped bring into the world.

I could not be prouder of the man he has become. I could not be more honored that a family a world away has entrusted us with the care of their beautiful daughter. I am awestruck that God has chosen to add another godly young woman full of talent and power to our family.

During that time I was often struck dumb by the overwhelming beauty of my daughter-in-law’s homeland. And I was floored by the total otherness of this place called The Philippines. Kristine said in the wedding video that she and Joe were from different worlds and she was completely truthful when she said it.

But during those 10 days in the developing nation that is The Philippines I was more than awestruck. I was left to ponder what God was and is DEVELOPING in me. Honestly, to my way of thinking what is transpiring inside of me is as foreign to my knowing as The Philippines was to my experience.

I am daily aware of the fact that my current spiritual reality is new ground for me. I have no memory of this place and precious little context to explain it.

I have often said to my boss that what God is going to do in our church may leave us looking somewhat unchurchy. If that is so for our congregation, it means that as individuals we are going to experience things that take us out of our understandings of who and what we have been. That is certainly something that might require some wondering.

I am mindful that historically, most powerful moves of God leave the people involved scratching their heads. As those moves DEVELOP people are left to fall back on the only thing that doesn’t change in the midst of life-altering change. That would be the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Well I am wondering at what God is doing in my life this year and I am wondering what to do about it. In all the wondering I am securing myself to God who is showing me through prayer, through the solid ground of His Word, the Bible and through the fellowship of believers. In that security I am DEVELOPING into the new thing that God wants me to be, in order to do the new thing that He expects from me as a part of Cornerstone Church.

Now what has God shown me in the midst of all this wondering……

A Very Busy Weekend.

/ joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

It was such a busy weekend at the Vicarage, I haven’t finished all the work it created yet…and it is almost Thursday. Part of that work is this post which I started writing on Monday morning and had to keep putting off until now.

The sad thing about getting behind like this is that life events don’t just stop so you can catch up. Oh no! They just keep rolling in so the work you didn’t get done when it was supposed to be done, keeps getting pushed back behind the work that you have to do today until saying things like “It was a very busy weekend”, really don’t matter because it is almost next weekend.

But I really want to tell you about the weekend we had here at the Vicarage.

Amanda started the weekend off when one of her friends who works at an adult dayhab in our area was burned out of her home. Amanda put out the call for clothing and essentials and spent a good deal of time gathering those items for delivery this week.

In the meantime Brenda left for a weekend tour of Connecticut. She performed her show, My Hiding Place, in Bristol on Friday night, taught a teen seminar in Greenwich on Saturday, and then preached twice on Sunday in Farmington.

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Monday she started jury duty and got selected for a case she has been sitting panel for since.

For myself, I have been holding down the home front. Saturday our artist’s community set up an art show at one of the local libraries.

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Sunday of course was church and then housework. I think I did something like nine loads of laundry this week! Of course none of us including the people who stayed here in Massachusetts have yet recovered fully from our trip to the Philippines. Some things have changed with Mom since we left and that leaves us all a little worried about her health.

So we watch and wait and work and wonder what is coming next for the ministers of the Vicarage. In the end, we can only deal with things as they come along. All of us are learning to just live in the moment and rejoice in the busyness and the blessedness of serving God in it.