I have not really been able to sing since the pneumonia. But recently I was asked by THE REACH NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER OF SPECIAL TOUCH DISABILITIES MINISTRY to put together a brief video for their virtual service coming up.
I gave it the old college try Friday. I am definitely out of practice, but at least most of the notes are right.
Just over a year ago God gave me a vision during a Sunday morning service. In this vision I saw a satanic force coming against our church. The Lord showed me that for a season we would be able to thwart this spirit power in the strength God had already given us. But the Lord told me that there would come a time when the enemy would be too powerful for us to face in our own strength. The Lord instructed that when that time came we were to call the church to pray and He would send us divine helpers to strengthen and revive the church.
I believe we have come to that time when we cannot face the enemy in our own strength…. and so we have started THE WALL prayer meetings to call the church to pray and ask God to send us the help He promised. This is our prayer meeting from last Wednesday night. Perhaps you can use it to spend some time focusing your own prayers. Please join us this Wednesday night from 7-8 to pray.
This is our sermon for on-line church today as we begin our new series called Pray!
Just over a year ago God gave me a vision during a Sunday morning service. In this vision I saw a satanic force coming against our church. The Lord showed me that for a season we would be able to thwart this spirit power in the strength God had already given us. But the Lord told me that there would come a time when the enemy would be too powerful for us to face in our own strength. The Lord instructed that when that time came we were to call the church to pray and He would send us divine helpers to strengthen and revive the church.
I believe we have come to that time when we cannot face the enemy in our own strength…. and so we have started THE WALL prayer meetings to call the church to pray and ask God to send us the help He promised. This is a prayer meeting from a week ago but perhaps you can use it to spend some time focusing your own prayers.
I have always believed that the journey of life is as important as the destination. In fact, when it comes to self discovery I believe that the journey is even more important than the destination. It’s in the journey that we discover our God given roles. It’s in the course of the journey that we discover where we belong in this vast family we call humanity.
The art of self discovery becomes possible only when we stop rushing headlong towards what we see as the goal…the destination, and when we take time to look around at what the journey means to us. What we understand about the journey, how we look at the part of the journey we are on now, helps us understand many things about who we were made to be. There is no right or wrong in this process of discovery just more and less honest.
I have a friend, for instance, who is being driven by the current situation, of social distancing, to begin managing our church food pantry to meet the needs of elderly people in crisis.
My own reaction to COVID-19 is the understanding that I was made for the secret place. Each day finds me driven deeper and deeper into the place of prayer, the place God and I have dubbed “the sage’s cave”.
As I said before there is no right or wrong in the process of self discovery, there is only more and less honest. I could wish to be more like my friend and start laying out plans to create social reforms that will help in the Covid crisis, but that would be me being dishonest about what is really in me, because I am afraid of the reaction of people when they hear I am being led to pray (because lets face it our culture loves social activists while it sort of scoffs at monks).
I will undoubtedly explore the idea of being honest in the process of self discovery in the future, but for now I simply want to encourage you, my readers, to use this current situation to discover something about yourself you did not know before.
Soooooo. ……WHAT DOES OUR NATION’S EXPERIMENT WITH SOCIAL DISTANCING SHOW YOU ABOUT YOURSELF?
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.
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.
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!
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?
The Bible says there is a time to every purpose under Heaven. I know you thought it was The Byrds, but actually ….no… The Byrds liberated it from King Solomon and his book of Ecclesiastes.
For all those who follow this blog, you know that God has been changing up my schedule rather severely over the last few months. He’s been causing me to ask what it’s time for in my life. He’s been asking me to discover what is important to me at this stage..and what is not. It’s been harder than I thought it would be. I thought I would just easily slide from one gear into the next, but this has not been so much a shifting as it has been a process.
Part of that process has been an evaluation of what my life is supposed to become. I said yesterday that I knew my life was supposed to include both more prayer and more creative connections with art. I also know that this time with my mother, as her health declines, is something that I will value forever, Her situation is the fulcrum which gives power to this whole movement of life. As I press into the situation with my mother, I am also discovering I do really value time spent relating with people.
Over my many years of ministry I have gotten so involved in the act of ministering to people and being an event coordinator to bring people together for the act of relating that at times I found myself loving people but being really sick of being with them…Too much of a good thing I guess.
Now as I am being pulled out of the middle of everything I am finding that I really do crave relationship with people. I so enjoy just being with the staff on Tuesdays. I love seeing the congregation on Sundays. I love sitting with people one on one just having a good chat. And I love having to go home to Mom so I can resume the quiet lifestyle I need to process all that comes out of those times of relation.
There is a time to every purpose under Heaven: A time to write, a time to draw, a time to take photos, a time to do house work, a time to take care of Mom and a time to be with people for a good chat.
I feel like I am becoming more balanced than I have ever been!
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.
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.
Notes From the Vicarage 