On Wednesday morning of last week… around 9:45am… I received a phone call from my pastor. He told me that he was being courted for a job opportunity for a part-time position as a Bible teacher as a local private school…and that he thought it would be the perfect job for me to pursue. Mind you…I already had a job and was making due with my, albeit crazy at times,  chuggin-right-along employment set-up. When something is possibly available…and possibly part-time (at best)… Well…you can see why I didn’t think too highly of this new opportunity. Nevertheless, it sounded like it could be promising, and there’s nothing wrong with applying…so…Hit the gas until the Holy Spirit hits the brakes.

I called my Mom at 11pm that night and asked her to print out the application online and fax it to me since I had no internet. Just after midnight I begin the application. 2:30am I finish the application. 8:00am I arrive dressed like a Missionary Doctor (khaki and blue) ready to turn in my application knowing full well I was not entitled to an interview, seeing as how they usually have three weeks of interviewing rounds before someone is considered yay or nay for hire. 8:30am, I am neck deep in what feels more like a family get-together than an interview. 9:20, after chumming it up and pseudo-interviewing commences I am reminded that this is a only a part-time position at best, even though they’d like to offer me more.

At 9:15am I leave feeling good, but only as good as a possibly part-time job can fill you. I go to pick up the awesome Assistant Director for my church’s Children’s Ministry: BIG. At 9:45am I receive a phone call while buying Starbucks for the Assistant Director of our Kid’s Ministry…saying, They would like to offer me the job without a formal interview, they never do this, but they feel God in it, they trust me, I’m the guy hands-down…BUT…the job has changed a bit.

My heart didn’t so much sink…It just wondered, and then laughed. I thought…”How could it get any more thin of an offer…it was already part-time. Maybe I’ll be hired on 1/4 time. That’s gotta have like a half of a benefit, right?”

Sure enough, the job had changed. I was not being considered for part-time, or 16th time or whatever it could have been reduced to. I was being offered a full-time teaching position and perhaps a coaching position of Vacaville Christian High School (private) teaching Bible to nearly the every student!!!

Haha!

WOW!

Thank YOU Jesus!

And that’s how God took 24 hours to turn my world on its head. Praise You God for Your leading up to this point. Your Love was on me when I was hearing nothing from employers and filling out dozens of applications, each one as defeating as the last. You were Good when I was roughin’ it working three different jobs at once. You were Loving when I was unemployed. And you are still the same, a Loving Father Forever, when I am blessed with such an opportunity and responsibility as to divide God’s Word for the next generation. I am humbled to be teaching the greatest subject in the world!

A few nights ago I was sitting outside just enjoying God. They sky was gorgeous… the clouds felt arranged. The moonlight was impressive and cozy. The sky was colored a deep, warm blue… Like laundry water. And it just so happend that beneath this inspiring sky I had a brave thought… I wanted God to intentionally intervene in my dreams. I wanted Him to specifically hold hostage my dreamwork, in the hopes of shedding some light and revelation on what our church staff could really take to heart in order to really feel refreshed at ouor labor in ministry. Part of me did this because I Love the people on my church staff and really wanted to bring a word of knowledge to them that would instill a sense of joy back into all our lives.

I also asked for this intervention because I Love experiencing  God in this way! When God meets me in such clear, strong and undeniable ways, it inspires such Bravery in me…After all, I have God’s word on the matter…and that does not fail. In those times I feel inclined to run through, if need be, all the world’s ridicule and recommendation against my following of God.

And so, God answered my petition. He invaded my dreams with a simple but strong vision…One that vividly made its way through me long after I pressed myself away from the pillow for the morning.

Everyone on our churchplant team has been going so hard, and so gung-ho on nearly everything we do, especially our Church, www.Remnantloves.me. He told me to let everyone (myself included) know the following…

Have fun. I enjoy you. I also enjoy what you are doing so much. It is delightful. In fact, if all of you have more fun, lighten up and let go of the outcome and leave that to Me, I will make Remnant’s atmosphere irresistible. I will make it so intoxicating with my Love that it will be like trying to frown on a waverunner…impossible unless you really force yourself to. So, have fun…and watch. I dare the people who I will place in your path to to frown in such available Joy. And when they can’t…I will say welcome home.      

How playful and great is our God! He kept giving me visons of people I’d never seen before (kids, adults, etc) as well as people I have known throughout all my life (family friends)… Every single one of them, over and over and over, flying by me on waverunners ‘neath the Summer sun! And, every one of them, finding it impossible to frown.

If God’s Love and Joy and quite honestly His tendency to want to have a good time and Live life abundantly, is likened to a waverunner…then think about… have you ever frowned on one? It’s not so much could you question. It’s more of a why would you ever want to question. Where’s your focus? On God’s joy, on on something else. You will be let down even if you focus on the gifts of God more than Him. And let’s be honest, not many of us struggle with focusing on His gifts. And so…the God-of-Dares triple-dog-dares you…

I dare you to frown on a waverunner!    

Every few days, Ireland embeds itself deep down in my daydreams.

Every few weeks, Ireland tosses around my senses, making me outrght in Love with a land I’ve yet to set foot on.

And every few months or so, Ireland arrests me with it’s sheer sense of Hope and Lore, something God wove deep into my heart for reasons still to be seen. Whatever the case, or whatever the wave of emotion, Ireland is wonderful, closer than any of us deserve, and calling out from treasured yarns of old.

Ode to Eire 

I often feel spiritual heartburn. I suppose this is much like the tension that wells up inside every man that harbors the Love of the Almighty God inside of him. It’s a tension that calls out from God’s own heart, reeling at the site of gifts wasted, and destinies left dormant. It feels like a constant back and forth between celestial citizenship and straddling the fallen world we call home. It has a matter-of-fact hostility to it…one that winds these these two unlikely bed-fellows tight, instigating what feels like all the commotion needed for a Civil War. 

Such wonderful disturbance sparred within my heart again recently, and I found God’s good anger teaching me to hate that which He hates. This lesson in righteous anger however did happen to go through me…which inevitably meant not all was going to go as planned (grin). I not only enticed a situation that has thrown people in jail for far less, but my heart also received a healthy doseage of God’s uncompromising fire…and minus the handcuffs, thankfully, I learned how to burn a bit more like He does.    

It all began as I was… driving down the longest road in my still somewhat quiet hometown (Napa Valley). I was taking in all the new sights…The ever increasing Hispanic influence; The building that reach just a bit higher to the sky than they did when I was in grade school; Even just being observant enough to hear the simple buzz of people’s back and forth as Napa simply holds more than it did before. All of it was sensible, even a bit serene, if not for what was to follow shortly. 

I just kept getting this squeezing sensation in my heart as I drove further and further down this road. It was not heartburn, as one of my very matter-of-fact friends filled in the blank as I shared this story earlier, but rather a divine kinling being thrown to the flame over being fired up to fight for people’s hearts, or simply being fed up enough to hand ‘em over to the selfish ways.

It in precisely in these moments that I begin to loathe anything tame, anything even remotely reselmbling domesticated. This sensation increased as I stopped at every red light, which of course I hit every one. It amassed more as I saw safe, little, Starbucks goers sipping away what I imagined to be much of their wasted, inverted selfish afternoons/lives…and I suppose it climaxed as I saw this old lady trying to cross the street for what I surmise had been longer that she should have been standing at all.

 This gaudy box of treasure called a Mercedes S class (the huge silver SUV) slowed down as it drew near to her crosswalk, and literally just as she started to shift her bobbing posture from its routine and allow her feet to start moving forward, the car sped up with revolutions that made her grab her chest, as I am sure she was caught off guard and frightened a bit. That car has determined she wasn’t worth the wait. 

My heart, knowing full well that I was not deserving of the Lord waiting on me and finding me, began to swell with fire. I didn’t care if I deserved it or not, none of us did. How could someone go so out of their way to scare and ruin a gesture of humanity that would have taken no longer than 15 seconds to account for. Heck, they could have not even stopped for her to cross and just passed by without a thought…but they lured her in, and then with windows down, sped off and laughed…loud enough for me to hear it four cars back.

 I decided not to chase down that treasure box and run it off the road, and opted instead to change lanes just so I could stop for this lady. I grinned inside as I made a line of 30 cars back up on a road that is not made to handle such congestion. I felt so good when I first saw her move out into the crosswalk…she didn’t do it with the overwhelming sense of gratitude, although that certainly was there…she did it with this sense of…thank you, and, I wish people had just done this earlier. That’s right old girl; you go right ahead with your bad self…My heart screamed…This was your slow, inheritance.

 All that said, the moment passed as quickly as it came and I was back to driving down this road. The fire was not satiated though. Usually my fires go out when I take initiative and right the situation with some justice…in fact…up until this point, I can’t remember when my heart had exacted justice and not become more gentle than flammable. I was still livid. If you had seen me from the car across from mine you would have seen a very calm guy from head to toe, unless of course you caught my eyes. I felt like I was about a few seconds from blowing a blood vessel in my eye, which, I’m not gonna lie, I thought would have been a neat experience. (It’s a guy thing)

 Next thing I know I see this police officer riding alongside me. He darts in and out of a few cars that are turning off our main road but for the most part keeps pace with me alongside the front of my car. I was so fiery at the time that all I could think was to yell at this cop for not doing something earlier about the situation with granny crosswalk. After all, I did see him parked at the corner of the street that was adjacent to Mercedes marauder. I imagined him being tame, not wanting to take off and track down a car that would just as easily pay such a fine as brush off the officer’s words altogether. 

Clearly I was over-reacting, but something in me hated the fact that he might have been tame when he should have protecting someone. That anger should never have been channeled toward any one person, especially under such assumptive trappings, but for a few moments it did…Oh how id did! I turned up the loudest song I had on my C.D., rolled down the window that he was riding alongside, and allowed the music to blast this cop with sound-waves that I was secretly believing could knock him off his bike. He just gave me a long stare, complete with Aviator glasses and stretched leather from his head tilt. It was like something out of a movie.

 The speed limit was 30mph, and so after we spent an eternity at the stop light side by side, I took off ahead of him and set the speed control to 35mph. I know, I know…not wise. It was almost as if I wanted to see if the same lackadaisical attitude that befell the crosswalk gal would roll its eyes at me in the 5mph ovet the limit grace zone. I saw him in my rear view mirror giving at least 3 or 4 looks down at his speedometer as if to double check that he was going the speed limit. He then slowly made his way up to me at the next red light. He creeped allong alongside so slowly you wold have thought he was interested in buying the car I was in. He jutted to a stop and asked me to turn the music down with a finger wag. I refrained from responding with an occasionally used finger wag of my own during my reckless youth, and turned the music down… a little bit.

He said to me, “Did you miss the speed limit sign?”With just enough hesitation to not seem too smart-alec I responded… “Nope, I saw it.” Now somewhere inside of me, despite the crazy anger that had come from the crosswalk lady and the selfish, domesticated aura of man strutting about my little town, cops not withstanding, I knew I was venturing into places that this anger had no place to be. I wore a face that I’m sure looked like, “Did you have anything else to ask me, or should I turn my music back up now?” Thankfully he just said, “You should slow down,” to which I nodded, in more of a gesture that said I heard him than of one of agreeance, and said, “Have a good day.”

 So, for all you other flammable hearts for Jesus out there, and especially the ones like mine that don’t usually ever find themselves fuming like the story above, but raging nonetheless…Stay in that passion, but learn how to corral it and point it back at the Enemy before anyone else. There’s a fine line between those who start fire and those who wield smart fire. Court Lady Wisdom, and allow the Holy Spirit to keep you aflame in all the ways God’s heart burns.

If you haven’t read this book yet, trust me, it is worth the few days it would take you. It’s not long, since I know that somewhere in the midst of the negotiating lives we live, that is an instinctive question running through many a mind. It’s a quick read (170 pages).

 Chan has such a knack for making the Gospel so simple and attainable, but not any simpler than it needs to be. What you will feel in this book is your Love called out for what it truly is, or what you may find, for what it is not. You either Love Him (Christ) or you don’t, and many of us say we do. Christianity is more renowned for hypocrisy than for Christ’s life,death and resurrection. Somehow Christians flimsy, fingerpointing lives have drowned out the reason their story even exists…to share Christ’s story. This book, if taken to heart, shoves you right off of the comfortable fencepost that much of Christianity resides on or behind…comfort and compromise.

Some of the simplest phrases in here are the most sobering…

What are you doing right now in life that requires faith?

Stress and Worrying says you don’t trust God at all to be who He is and handle your problems. It says that somehow your problems are bigger than God, God is a liar, not who He is, and that somehow your problems are exceptional. Both stress and worrying reek of arrogance.

Can you worship a God who isn’t obligated to explain His actions to you?

Enjoy this book, let it get at your heart…just lay down yourself, and when you feel you’ve done that, do it further still. Do not be lulled into the deception that you have arrived at Christ…He only sits still in one place, and that is upon His throne in Heaven. So, until you are there, assume that arriving at a place does not mean you are done pursuing Him. Pursuing Him is arriving at Him! 

There is ever a revolving door, an unending well, of accomplishments and missions to be beheld…but if Christ is Love, and Love is an action word…then you move, in journey and joy, toward God, with His Spirit inside of you…You only arrive when you realize He traverses the distance between Him and you…not the other way around, and keep pursuing Him. It’s not so much thinking there’s endless work to be done, but that the victory has already been attained in Christ, and from that place, a sense of…Wow-let-me-dedicate-everything-I-can-this-side-of-Eden-to-the-cause-of- Christ!

 So…get busy and be His…however that looks! Work on you and Him and what that should look like if you truly Love Him mor than anything else…then…Start asking Him to show you how to Love everyone that’s been given to you within arm’s length and earshot. This is how Crazy Love is brewed!  Thank you Francis. Thank you Jesus!

This past Wedneday I attended a most God-thrilling conference up at Bethel Church in Redding, Ca. The conference was entitled Pastoring Kids in Revival. I had read and heard from others how God shows up at this church! God has given a special anointing to Bethel and his leaders there in that they impart healing miracles left and right, curing cancers and ailments just like much of Jesus’ ministry. They even have healing rooms that people travel to from all over, even internationally, to come and be healed by God in. 

What I did not anticipate so incredibly was the level of humilityand trust so many people up there have in their hearts for God. Those leading the children’s ministry get this half-nauseous, half-anger look every time someone talks about pastoring children in anything remotely resembling the tones of day-care! 

Bethel kids are treated with a very serious Love. Not the cute little, albeit unconditional Love we are used to seeing little kids get doted on with…but a serious Joy. They endear the children as though they were little Stargates, constantly and simply able to tap into God’s presence, power and playfulness. They view them as glimpses into God, which, given how complicated we make tapping into God’s presence in our lives and hearing from Him…they view them as little teachers.

I can’t begin to say how thankful I was to attend this conference and how equipped they sent us all on our way to do His bidding in our own appointed worlds.  One of those many things I took away from this conference circled around gathering others. Luke 10:2 tells us that,

The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.

How true that always is…A lack of laborers, people, willing to go out from the comfortable, or heck, even stay put right where they’re at and simply stop, and Love, with all they have and are! I believe this unfortunate truth stretches indeed as far as the ends of the earth and as deep as our Love, or lack of Love, for God. But… in the midst of a world tearing itself apart, as usual…there is hope.

Did you know that right now, according to UNICEF 2008 statistics released last month on their website, the world, for the first time in history, has enough literal food being produced to actually give every single person in the world 2,738 calories of grub per day…making the crisis known as food shortagenow properly called by its real name, death by distribution. That’s exciting to know that now, unlike ever before, we have the resources to actually end world hunger. You always hear those Miss America contestants fulfill the cliche of, “I’d end world hunger” as one of the caviotanswers to sum up there ending thoughts to the judges. Well, high five girls, because although I bet you didn’t know the truth behind that hope, it’s actually possible!

I could go on forever with so many of the things I learned up at Bethel this past week…And I will…only over the course of a few prayed over blogs, and not all at once here. What I did however want to mention was that little treasure I took away about seeking and calling those oh-so-needed laborers out to the harvest alongside you.

This is such a great visual! Elephants often split up their herd, sometimes as far as 15 and 20 miles in search of water when in the dry season. These lone ranger olee-phants (as hobbits call them), often the visionary, lead bulls, but not always (there are some Joan of Arc Mama-elephants that do this too) go out, braving attack from other animals, dehydration, separation, poachers, etc, all in an effort to find water, buried deep beneath the parched, sun scorched African terrain.

When they find these pocketsized hidden oases, andthey do, they begin to stomp on the ground. The stomp is always the same…rhythmic, Loud, angry, excited, determined…a crazy tension between fury andJoy! They stomp for hours if need be, until the others elephants hear the stomping from miles away and hear it they do! They are trained andobedient, even in the midst of going through the motions of the herd-life, to know what that call of Life sounds like. When they hear this stomping, they know that someone from their family has foundlife underground and is calling everyone to it.

The original stomping from our reconnaissance elephant never stops…instead…he is simply joined by other elephants, upon arrival, and they begin to all stomp together! At some point, when enough elephants, or laborers, have heeded the call and come to stomp, it happens. Breakthrough! The ground gives way from the relentless stomping of the multitudes, and breaks forth with life-giving, life-saving water for all who have come! The elephants feast on the harvest of Life so much so, that they often call that place home for months, rationing out the water in order to stay put and pay homage to the Life they have sought out.

They often times set up shop right in the midst of a packs of hyenas andlions…who, if you know anything about these animals, have serious advantages over elephants come nighttime. Vulnerable elephants, their kids, their sick, etc stay put andbrave the packs of superior, 1000+ lb preferably night-hunting cats. Never thought I’d say this, but how incredibly inspiring these animals are in doing this! The seek out Life, find it, relentless stomp away, calling others to Life, gain breakthrough, andthen enjoy the harvest…until they do it all over again! They now call the dangerous place, where Life is/was found, home! 

So, although I’ve never prayed it before…I will pray this prayer daily, hopefully for a lifetime. I want you to bring me some elephants God! I want people to come alongside me and believe in the vision…Not that I have, although that’s true, but in Your vision God, through me, to go out, wherever and Love people back to Life…back to You…back Home. I want laborers who will stay put and prepare, whether it be here or where they’re at, because, as much as it drives ‘em insane, their hearts are believing and calling upon bigger things than impatience. They don’t want to go try out this life abroad…or tinker in mission’s trips to test the waters…

I want people who want to go out forever, should they be so lucky and led, and stomp the hell out of the parched landscapes of man, and bring forth revival and living water to all who would come and drink!  

  I don’t want people, as someone strategically told me last week, who want to go and plant orphanages. I love that person, but I don’t want someone whose end all be all with God and their calling is to plant orphanages. Of course I want to plant orphanages…but I also want to plant God seeds…everywhere! Seeds that mature into on-the-spot churches. Seeds for shelters for, AND in large part, run by the street kids. Seeds of stealing back the girls chained to their world of prostitution. Seeds of the hungry who without their desperation would normally despise us, coming in droves and feeding off of the spiritual and the literal Gospel we bring because of God.

But, before ever I do this out there, I am learning and Loving to do this here. I am praying every day, all day, for elephants to be sent this way. I want elephants to read this and get excited at the call to stomp forever on parched lands not our own! I want elephants who will leave everything behind, family, friends, expectations, savings, security, the safety even of their own lives…Count it all as loss, and come stomp…counting such a life, such a response of faith, such a sacrifice…all of it, as absolute surrendered Joy in Christ. I want elephants who don’t have it all together…some who might even get lost on the way to the stomping they are wandering toward. Those elephants will Love the best, because they know, they cannot do this on their own, and want to do nothing without God.

So…I stomp! As loud as I can! May my feet clamor with crazy Love…Over a vision, over a call for Revival, over dry land that need only be broken open with fellow laborers…with my fellow elephants! I stomp! And I encourage you, however this can encourage your walk…don’t just run with it…Stomp with it. Ask God to burn in your heart the Love for the one that is tucked away, radiant with God’s Love around them, out in the harvest, waiting to be touched. Maybe you’re someone who needs to perk up those ears and hear the stomping that’s been just out of earshot for you for so long. Maybe you are the one to catch fire and do the crazy stomping, believing that God will send others. Whatever the case, believe in the fire, the promise and the Love that Papa-God has for us, and let it fill you in ways that won’t let you keep it to yourself.

Spiritual stomping…is simply Prayer! Constant, humble, relentless, violently confident assaults of Heaven’s open door, petitioning for God to do what He does best…to Love.

Love to pray…Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of Himself. Ask and seek and your heart will grow big enough t receive Him as your own.

I feel remissed for having been absent again from my blog for over a month. I read other people´s blogs, and, often knowing a bit of the chaos and responsibility they are negotiating on their end, still find myself wishing they could find the time to at least sneak something, anything up for me to read.

So, since I know I myself have felt righteously and selfishly frustrated at not being able to read something more current than last month  on people´s blogs, I apologize for becoming what I hoped to avoid.

That said, God be praised in His working through Remnant Church! Yes, our little church plant out here did launch, as I mentioned in my last blog entry. Our first service saw over 100 people in attendance, 20+ kids, and, God Almighty…16 salvations! Praise God for 16 new vantages of Life from God´s window…Flung open high and wide!

I´ve heard so many stories of churches spend years in existence, literally years, with many added to their ever-growing  congregation…these churches see multiple services befall them as naturally as the rain comes diving from above. Suddenly their parking lots are flooded, and things like a seat for everyone during the service still persist, despite their efforts, as being a (good) problem.

Remnant does not yet have the problem of entirely packing out its 230 seat movie theater, or overflowing the adjacent kid´s theater just across the way…But… it did see, by His glory and Light, 16 people give their life to Christ! I´ll take a baker´s dozen and change worth of souls and call them heaven bound at the end of the day, over a crowded parking lot leading into a triple deep service regimen wherein the itch of every message ultimately touches on drawing people out of their mediocrity, their comfort, and their selfish, small faiths.

Ideally, much like the examples of Bethel Church up in Redding, Ca. and Elevation in Charlotte, N. Carolina, we want the masses to come to Christ. We want the city we call home to be changed and called a movement of Love. Remnant is not some small group of people hoping to make a small but definite dent in this city, maybe drawing a few lost souls to Christ along the safe way.

Some guy asked me last week who Remnant was. I told him…

 We are a committed, imperfect but resilient group of spiritual siblings in Love with God and in Love with people. We are not going anywhere. We are here in Fairfield, our home, giving our lives to Christ by Loving  this city back to a life it has either long forgotten or never known, depending on how long you´ve called this place Home. 

I caught myself a little by surprise. I know I can every now and again spit out some elocute poetic spur of the moment soundbytes, but whenever I spend extended amounts of time with my Remnant siblings…The fire, peace and Love of God just races to my brim, seeming to spill on anyone I bump into. I walked away thinking just how much I truly believe in these people and what God is doing through them!

Remnant wants and is unleashing Heaven´s Fury on this city. The more and more mobilized we get, the more Love will come. I know this night there will be many of the team, if not all, praying hard  for one simple thing…More Love. More of God´s Love and more Love filling and spilling from us.

If you´ve ever seen Hook, with Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams then you know that the leader of the Lost Boys, in this case, Peter Pan, had to crow! Pan crowed because it symbolized the deep war-cry that he was the leader of those looking on. He crowed because he knew the way to go…what to do next…and how to keep strong.

It may sound cocky, but Remnant crows! We are all stepping out of our culture-made and worldly-inspired shells to Love small, and learning to have a bit of Holy Swagger. I´ll admit, unabashedly…It´s hard. When Christ´s Love grips you, it breaks you down, but I´ve never seen a group of people so humble and committed to learning how to Love more! And like I said, the most exciting thing about our family, is, in many ways, we´re just getting started. Again, that holy swagger in us sounds a lot like, You aint seen nothin yet!… but WE BELIEVE IN THAT! It´s not us we´re confident in, but the One in us.

We are enjoying with all our hearts releasing that heavenly fury that stirs people to a Love beyond themselves that sounds like nothing short of a War-cry…Fairfield´s war-cry is one that sounds like… We will not be afraid of the gang activity in our city. It will not keep us locked up at night in our houses.

We are inspiring people left and right…to do what we ourselves want…top Love more! This passion is finding people! Lives are changing! People are excited to call themselves a bridge, and literally just go and Love the homeless…Not just consider handing them change when they boldly walk up to us and ask us for it.

We want this city to know who we are…so they can draw crazy close to us… in order to draw dangerously close to the One in us, the One moving us, the One Loving in and through us. We believe, as we´ve already seen, we will be known as Lovers amidst this city. Yes we will be called Christians. Yes we will be referred to as a church. And yes they will categorize us up to being Jesus-people. But we will known as people who Love before all else.

Everyone, whether you hate God or call Him Abba, wants Love. That´s not an opinion…it´s a fact of the way we were all made and wired.

Even the man going into the brothel is looking for God.

                                                                                – G.K. Chesterton

Wanting Love is not an if you´re inspired to run after it question, but rather a who and a whatare you gonna call Love question. For some the answer you settle into becomes what the world has to offer. For others it´s the pursuit of sex, money or career. We see the gamut of impostors here in Fairfield. A community without any real community is often a perfect way to describe this place.

Community or not though…this place does have a King, and we are stirrin´ up the enemy´s best as we call upon a Love that will ruin every person in this city if need be…ruin ´em back to Life.

We are drawing out of people a Love that will crush every selfish dream they´ve drooled over for years in order to return to a selfless fulfillment of Loving others.

We are thrilled to offer people a chance at death…A chance to die to their old self and put on their new self, their new life, and their new, inescapable Love from God in them.

More than anything though, as a church, as His church, we are thankful for Him. Not that He has given us this calling, although for that, Hallelujah in the Highest!

Not for the provision He has continually shown us right out the gates, and long before we ever approached the Fairfield gates as it were, although again, (hands raised high) You are King and Provider!

But truly more than any gift we´ve been given thus far, we are grateful, broken down and built up in Him as we seek Himas the Gift. It´s so easy to exalt the gifts above the Giver, especially when you´re neck deep in ministry…but we know God is righteously jealous over someone praising His work over and above Him, whereby missing out the fact that it came FROM HIM, the One who Loves us.

So, in that spirit, I thank you for following along this journey with us, as God plants His church…the one Healways had in mind for Fairfield, California.

Some Remnant prayers you could join with us on…

We are praying for 50 people to be at the core of Remnant Church by year´s end. 50 committed people is what we feel God is showing us as we brave the kneeling space before His throne in petitioning how to advance His kingdom.

We are praying for the right people to be brought to Remnant. Many churches pray for their teams and congregation to be filled with people, but we don´t want just any people. We don´t even technically want who we think the right people are. We want who God had in mind all along to come to His church, Remnant, here and now.

We want to be a church that faithfully strengthens and sends out people. In the spirit of not ever hoarding people in order to advance our little kingdom at the expense of His, we pray that Remnant would be a place where people would come for seasons. Whether those seasons be for months or years on end, we feel the call from God to be something of an oasis, a hammock, shade, and a boot camp in the midst of this tattered and harsh spiritual landscape.

We are praying for the right person and team that god always had in mind, to come, shed their hearts on His altar every Sunday, and Love with us as family.We have had some truly amazing musicians already grace our stage with not only their talent, but also their hungry hearts for God. They were in every sense, Worship Leaders. Some possessed hearts more humble than others and we´ve seen the humility and Love we want to lead us in sound.      

I thank you, as always for your support of me and for wherever I am before God currently in Life. I have not forgotten about my calling to plant orphanages around the world. In fact, as much as I can be without actually being there just yet, I am in the thick of it! 

I am praying fervently, with my team members, for His timing and joy to be made transparently clear to me according to my calling. This much is clear…The next step will definitely involve getting my hands dirty out in one of the locations God has dearly placed on my heart (more than likely at the end of August).

Again, I consider my calling, aside from my salvation, the greatest gift I´ve ever been given, as it´s a spoken word from God for my Life. So, instead of trying to figure it out, so to speak, and discern how best to be right…I am simply embracing it with joy, bravery, and Love for Him. In this way, I am being shown more and more about His gift as I pursue Him the Giver above all else.

Some personal prayers  you can lift up for me…

Pray for the process in my heart and in my calling. Pray my heart is glad to wait and be patient, as it is pleasing to Him for such things to occur. Pray I would simply draw close to Him…and allow the details of anything else, to come naturally and bravely after seeking Him first.

Pray for the little children I will be charged with Loving and leading right now.

Pray that they may be born safely into this world and that, although they will encounter some of the unfortunate this side of Eden, as they will be orphans and have lost their parents, praythey may be brave and hopeful in the unseen things to come.

Pray they take strength now in that one day they will be found by a young man so consumed with Love for them, long before he ever even met them in fact, that he, I, will refuse to call them orphans once I find them. They are no longer orphans if I find them because God will have found them through me. 

Pray for my heart´s strength in considering such amazing feats to come. God is stirring His Love in the heart of me so muchfor them lately that I am all but breaking down in tears and expectation for that day when I am sent out to Love them Home.

Pray for my heart to learn how to Love Big where I am at. Pray I humble and submit my tendency to wield a small Love and allow God to grow it Big here and now.

Pray against the temptation to see anything right now as a stepping stone to what I really called to. I am called first and foremost to Love God and Love people with everything all I am.

Pray I allow deep down inside the honor and privilege that it truly is to be a part of His church Remnant. 

Plead to Heaven asking that He strengthens the hearts of those that are in my future…Those unseen, those so very far away and deeply hurting right now…Pray that they take courage that they have long been placed in  my Love-path. Pray they trust in that day and seek Him all the days before I find them and they find me.

Pray for the team that He will surround me with to fight now in their hearts to find that deep sense of urgency and courage and Love in Him to one day brave the darkness abroad with me in the effort to Love His kids. Pray their hearts be encouraged…Pray they can feel how I can hardly wait to find them…And all the more, how I can´t wait to speak the words to those we will go to in emails just like this…” Tell the kids I am coming soon… and I am bringing others.”  

Prayfor young men to rise up with this heart for Kids to join me. (Haha, plenty of young, amazing women interested, but I´m really praying for a few dudes!) This one might sound a bit playful, but it´s a very serious one to my heart. I want men to fight alongside me!     

Thank you again for your hearts for God and for me. I know how much many of you have to traverse in just a simple week´s worth of happenings, so thank you for even making time to sit and pour over these words. Thank you even more for those of you who take my prayer requests upon yourself and lift them consistently to Heaven for me and for all the people they are are gonna touch one day.

I will effort keeping my month filled with at least a handful of blogs as I most certainly want to share all that´s happening in God´s workings out here and through me.

God be with you where you are, and remember, it´s as simple and as tough as Loving God and Loving people with all you are. I pray you pit your current struggle(s), ruts, and/or dis-enchantments in Faith up against the Truth, Command and expectation of Loving Him and Loving others…do that…and then see how simple the Gospel is.

Carry on Loving Faithful ones. 

I almost can´t believe it´s been over a month since I last blogged. Even in my recent, busy past of playing hopscotch across the country and negotiating pressing on with my Master´s degree in usually the opposite end of everywhere else I was needed…I still always managed to find time to spill on to paper.

Staying off the radar and being consumed like this reminds me of when I was back in High School. My closest friends would attest that there was this portion of my Senior year where I basically vanished. I didn´t abandon them and be that guy, but I did vanish from all those extra times I normally spent with all the people God had placed in my life.

As you can guess, the reason for the vanish was a girl. I found myself smitten with a cowgirl. This was something new and refreshing to me. She was genuinely fun to spend time with. And best of all, she was an escape from everything that was already convincingly uninspiring and fake about High School.

Much like the girl worth vanishing for, I have been found by a new Love… a new inspiring face to give of my time…a new escape that comes blazing with all the freedoms of Christ. For two months now I have been co-laboring with the Lord in planting a church with a team hailing from Bloomington, Indiana…with original roots as far away as Africa. Our team looks like an affirmative action poster… and I bet the Lord smiles everyone time He sees all the colors of His kids frozen in time for testimony and joyful reminder.

Remnant Church was birthed out of a vision from God through one Irishman´s relationship with Him. It did not come from  a big church tithing excess, or out of a school for churchplanting, where one learns how to execute his and/or her efforts in all the ways necessary to see success. True, God can and often has been in many of those facets of seeing His Kingdom advance…But what an incredible feeling and sensation to know that God gave specific vision and breath to this particular church and the planting of it.

It´s a bit nuts when you read about how it all began…and you really have to read the quick little page-long history of how the vision on  Remnant´s website (www.remnantloves.me) in order to truly begin to understand the supernatural depth of it all.

Some of the highlights of it´s journey involve its impartation to our Lead Pastor, Mark McGovern,  some 30,000 feet in the air, as he was on his way to a mission´s trip in the Dominican Republic, at age 13 (some 14 years before he would actually plant). That same dream came to him again on his way to yet another mission´s trip some 5 years later. It even has some Indiana Jones to it, with a whole X marks the spot craziness, but I won´t spoil it with my re-telling.

I absolutely Love the people I am working alongside. The Lead Pastor has generations upon generations of Irish ancestry, something I adore!

The team has got some Africa beauty to it as well, as our lead Productions Director is from the Congo. Everyone on the team is married, or months away from that step…nearly all of them inter-racial couples. It´s beautiful!

Everyone of staff is working full-time jobs…something that I nearly cry about in prayer time because it´s so inspiring. What a testimony Paul certainly had when he was negotiating through his tent-making ministry days. We here at Remnant get the privilege of looking at people with tired eyes, both from planting a church, (about 30 hours a week) and having full time jobs (about 40 hours a week)…and through those bloodshot 50-70 hours a week eyes we say…we Love you…and I think in large part because we labor so, people all the more allow the space in their lives for the God in us to be heard!

And so, that said, we are officially launching this coming Sunday! We´ve already been in our movie theatre (a space that was not supposed to be rented by anyone originally) for three consecutive Sundays now, but this Sunday is Remnant´s birthday! We are gonna keep bringing people home To God´s embrace at Edward´s Cinema in Fairfield, Ca. and would invite any and all genuine prayers over our times to come in that place.

As you can imagine, the team is often tired during the week. All of us, whether it be with the long nights of having new babies, picking up second jobs to help us be able to live closer to the church, or simply labor through the many, many things that God has continually placed in our charge…we all could use prayer for strength and energy to keep on keep on.

The most recent praise note is after sifting through the growing pains of fielding a worship band…among which was us resorting to some Hillsong DVD worship video (not the ideal choice for Remnant´s staff) we were approached by a guy and his 6 member worship band who are now going to lead our church in worship for a good 2 months it would seem. Praise God!!! We went from trying to figure out how to upload cross-lyrical scrolling, Live projector syncing and Hillsong DVD…to now having to make room for a full Live band that has a cheloist! DVD to cheloist! Haha, God is in control.

So, that´s where I´ve vanished to and who I have been Loving with these past few months. This is the busiest week by far with upwards of 5,000 door hangers still needing to be hung, a stage needing to be built, personally for me I also am over the Children´s Ministry along with another woman, and so this week will be the first week of curriculum and worship for us. Along with a million other things that simply have to be flushed out, decided upon, practiced and prayed about…we´ve got a lot to do! But, as the whole team is in unity about, it´s all worth it to see our mission statement become a reality.

 So people far from God fall in Love with Jesus.          

Please check us out when you make time on our website. It´s ever undergoing reconstruction and will constantly continue to look better and better as the weeks upon weeks of Loving Fairfield stack high and deep in all our stories.

Follow along as we make History with His story.

It began by sneaking out  beneath an early morning  in backwater Kentucky. We were chased out of town by  their skies´ notorious peaches and blues that still managed to tatter a Winter-touched above… Kentucky´s up was only equalled by its below…a chilly land, ridden with a slue of surprisingly bright grays and browns. The Bible-belt´s bluegrass boy waved us on our way´til we vanished as far from them as they did from us…out of sight. 

Next came the politically charged sprawl of Illinois´landscape. Everywhere you could see, smokey swirls, both tidy and unruly, stretched their long necks into the sky, at the behest of the busy fires from within toasty homes. Broken, unfinished and survivingrang through the stories that hung in the air. A hodgepodge collection of half-finished, and half-destroyed brick buildings line the major streets of the town, testifying to a city that has planned to live for quite sometime now, but struggled little more than survive… The tale for so many. Grandiose Beautiful props its prowess up from within the crowd of weather-stained brick, as sporadically the cities broken sense of family is accentuated further as healthy church spires peer down at all the gang tagged, lost and hurt people´s pastimes below.    

As soon as you would start to really listen to Illinois´ story, St. Louis jumps out from behind the clouds with nothing short of architectural zeal. The St. Louis Arch, despite its  prowess, is quickly placed in its time, as seemingly smaller buildings in its distance quickly  surpass it along  their push toward where the developing storm dwells… it´s a quaint brilliance now.  Haha, a giant Arch…such a guy idea; Only rivaled by the follow-up idea of putting an elevator than traced the Arch´s journey from the inside out more like a roller-coaster than anything else. I half expected the elevator ride to be promoted as,

Come one, Come all…RIDE the HELLEVATOR.

At the end of which, the elevator would shoot you out the end, attached to a bungeechord that would land you and your group of fellow few into a giant St. Louis Cardinals baseball mitt…and then depending on how far your jump made the mitt retreat to catch you, you would then get handed a comparative amount of coupons down below the ride for that amount of Gap and/or Starbucks gift certificates. Despite the mind-wandering and the surprising complete vacancy at such a sight as the Arch, it did maintain its intended hope…to make people stop in their tracks…inevitably pull off the side of the road, or drift off as they multi-tasked not taking their eyes off either it or the lane they were barely keeping their swerving in…and simply say “Wow.”   

Enter a one Lincoln, Nebraska. What might you ask is in Lincoln, Nebraska. Well…we were. And I think there was some other stuff, but in the dead of night with a wind that literally feels like a group of swarming, chilly vampires, sucking the blood right from your body every timeyou stray from the car or house…yeah, not the most gentle of places to say the least. I loved every minute of the dreaded cold though. Something about the inescapable truth of it all…no matter what you think, or how you perceive it, or what others encourage you to think about it…that kind of creation, that kind of cold simply has a way of treating everyone the same…it´s nips and bites and stings at every exposed part you leave for the wind to feed on.

It was quite an adventure laughing wildly from within a struggling-to-stay-warm car as my Dad and I watched the temperature drop to a wild   8 below zero. Equally humbling and wonderful was how no matter how brief you felt your stint outside was, it still took a good few minutes of coughing and lung-stinging from within the warmth of your car for your body to re-acclimate to anything not flippin´ 8 below. Temperature watching in Lincoln…one day I´ll have to visit in the light of day and see what other things God has put there to let Life feast on.

Next on the journey…Cheyenne Wyoming and its many layers… Now we´re talking! Having only had one experience prior to this with Wyoming (Jackson Hole) I was really looking forward to this. Something about random little nooks and crannies way up and and amidst an otherwise very sparsely populated land…yeah, my heart just likes it a lot! Wyoming is kind of this perfect mix of isolation, quiet, raw nature, and small hunkered down towns smaller than most high schools…very cool!

We traversed the entire length of Wyoming´s southern border, visually treating ourselves to the typically overshadowed blessings of forgotten mountain Life, which almost always plays second fiddle to Colorado´s lore. Mountains of every size and shape impressively jutted out from beneath the snowy terrain. Old wise ones in the back towered like cold Kings, unable to be broached by all the smaller kid mountains crowding everything within earshot…like little emissaries they were.

 The layers I spoke of were kind of cozy. The seemingly always fresh snow was one of them. Beneath the snow, many tumbleweeds-to- be flashed their many subtle, different, dried tans. Still further beneath those stood the remains of tall, frigid, cattle grass. Cowgirls grinning behind pinned up waitress hair and roughneck men crowded middle-of-nowhere truck stops restaurants just the right way!

After sleeping through much of Salt Lake City, Utah, which still does not excite me to adventure to this day, for whatever reason…we then finally reached the best part of the trip…At long, the long spoken of snow storm, that according to all the amateur, self-proclaimed meteorologists along our trip, should have been blanketing us with its white kiss for days on end now. Well, finally it was here!

It made our big bad Hummer look like a child´s toy. And so we went, blindly and slowly,reaching through the white night without a clue beyond, “easy does it.” Giant 18-wheelers, stopped dead in their tracks, dotted the roadside along our trek. We must´ve had to pass a huge, noisy snowplows every 100 feet or so…they always travelled in packs.

There were also Maverick chain-up guys making at least $2,000 a night  everywhere there was a huge steel beast of a truck sitting dead-weight on the side of the open ice-way… Steaming and sighing like a great wounded beast, groaning as it had to inch back and then forth in order to get its rubber wounds dressed as needed with chain-drape. We also had to stop every few miles or so to get out and slam the window wipers up against the window, hoping that would knock the frozen solid ice off of what was scraping and slushing up the huge looking glass we were trying to survive through along our  path.

All in all…it was a fairly eventful thing, this road trip! And most importantly it reminded me of just how much God wants us to Live, and Live abundantly! I was shown just how tame I had become in my surroundings… not entirely tame, but somewhat, which in many ways is worse…A slow and painful death, rather than an all at once,  glorious outing. And so, even if it´s not a road trip, although I would highly recommend one, go, leave your safe shores, and just trust God in the way that is only to be called travelling. I don´t care if you have to Yes-Man it (new movie) and just show up with someone at an airline ticket counter, ask for the next available two tickets to wherever… the point is just go! 

I imagine Jesus nowadays, much as He did then, would have been a road-tripper! And so too should his kids be. It doesn´t have to be anything fancy, as this is not the easiest time to save money and spend it on adventure, but for the sake of truly living…there will never be a price too steep if the motivations of your heart as as Christ´s are…true, pure, surrendered and incredibly enthused about this Life. So, at the risk of starting to sound like one of those horribly lame go-get-´em motivational books, I´m gonna stop with the travel chants of just go…and pray that people would be moved to instead, through God´s inspiration, think it a bit more creatively, a bit more spontaneously, and a bit more now to living this way.

inJoy.

I have been accused of being an over-thinker at times, but also praised for thinking through things so thoroughly. So, somewhere in the midst of all that I sometimes get caught up in the seriousness of life, which is both good and bad.

It´s Good because there simply are certain things, very important things, that demand our sincerity and our serious side…but it´s BAD because this world is fallen, and quite simply runs much to the beat of anything but God, making tragedy like clockwork…there is always gonna be something to cringe about, become serious for and not fight it with often times the most serious thing of all: laughter. I think a great place for someone to find themself is warring wonderfully in a way that you have a serious Joy about you. 

A great way to gain prespective on where you´re possibly at with your serious playful balance is the following question…I think a great question to ask someone is… who is Jesus? The way they answer will often tell you a lot about where they´re at, where they´ve been and more importantly, exactly what they think about the most intimate and important thing to them.

I for instance do not always picture Jesus braving the night and wading through the early mornings in Holy laughter with our God. Perfect example…I focus so much on how monumentous Jesus´task was. Good thing it His task was not appointed to me. He did not accomplish His feat because He engaged in Holy misdirection, or Divine distraction…He instead met in head on with a Spirit of Joy and a faithfulness to that Joy that I think would show our Jesus to have been snickering and grinning much more than we sometimes think Him to be…at least more than I do anyway.

And so, I submit to you a video that is exactly what this world needs more of…something to remind us  not to not take ourselves or our lives more serious than we often do.