Newsletter – Summer 2010

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March Newsletter

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Living in Tension

I recently posted the following tweet -
Learning to live out the tension of walking in rest as a King’s son & still living out of desperate dependence upon His grace for each step.

A friend ask me to explain on facebook and this is what I wrote…

I know that was a ridiculously long answer to a simple request for a rephrase, but it has helped me to form these words. Now my own A.D.D. mind has a better understanding of what I was saying…

Okay… Here goes my attempt – (note – Matt, I hope this is helpful to all of us A.D.D. types, but I am writing it because I think it’s helpful to try to articulate what I am feeling.)

Learning to live out the tension = Not turning away from one truth in order to follow something that is equally true.

Example – God is sovereign is a timeless truth. He has delegated us to walk in authority here on this earth is equally true. If we just hold to God’s sovereignty, we can become complacent waiting on God to do what He has commissioned us to do. If we only hold on to our authority, we can become self-centered and strive out of the flesh, lacking His power to effect any real change on the earth. Holding these truths in tension means that we live life aware of and connected to both of these truths.

Walking in rest as a King’s son = sonship is the core of my identity. When I can really begin living out of that truth, it frees me to live from a place of rest in my heart, because my heart is at home in my Father’s heart. It’s about stillness, and about stopping. For me it means that Brad has to completely stop trying to impress anyone, or allowing my identity to be shaped by what others think of my. Only what my Father thinks matters when it comes to who I am. It also means I need to stop allowing the gifts that my Father gave me to define me, but realizing that they are gifts from Him, and that they fit “the me” he created me to be. It even means that every part of me must stop allowing my identity to be linked to God’s “calling” or purpose for my life. Regardless of the call, I am my Father’s son, and at the times when my heart is really aware of that, then my heart is at rest, at home in His love.

Living out of desperate dependence on His grace for each step = My heart is passionately and actively leaning in to Him as the only source of my life. I recognize that I will never be weaned off of His grace. I need Jesus as much as I ever have. Common church culture accidentally teaches us that as we grow in the Lord, that we should not require as much of His grace. (Sometimes this is mistaken for ‘the victorious Christian life”.) We become sin managers, trying to avoid failure, but the truth is that I will never out grow God’s grace. My heart needs to ‘desperately’ dive into His grace at each step. I feel like if don’t acknowledge my need for His grace and life to fill me, that I always strike out on my own and find myself worn out and beaten up, crawling back to Him needing grace and mercy. So I think desperate dependence on Him means that I am aware that His breath/ Spirit is the only thing that satisfies and I actively and passionately desire that breath to fill my every heartbeat.

Learning to hold on to both of these truths is sometimes hard for me. When I am meditating on the Father’s invitation to live at rest, it is easy to abuse the invitation and get complacent and forget about my need for His Spirits life. When I am more aware of my desperate need for Him, I can slip into a place of trying to stir things up on my own, thinking that my zealous activity can make things happen.

The truth I am shooting for is found in the life of Jesus. John 1:18 says that Jesus “is in the Father’s bosom.” His home is and always has been the Father’s heart. He lived in complete dependence upon the Father, doing only what He saw the Father doing. In the life of Jesus, living at rest as God’s son and staying desperately dependent on Him come together in a way that seems natural and normal. So, my quest in living out these truths in proper tension is found in following Jesus.

Pray for iSCPx

Baptism, Baptism, Baptism…

February 2010 Newsletter – Click below to read full size

Going WITH Jesus into the Harvest

For the past several years, I have been hearing about the coming marriage of Prophetic Intercession and Apostolic Mission. This fall, I had a strong sense of anticipation as I considered that unbroken prayer had been offered up for 10 years from both IHOP and the 24/7 prayer movement. I felt like a good time for harvest. So I began to ask the question…

What will it look like when Prophetic Intercession marries Apostolic Mission? Their children will grow up and not know the difference between the two.

Jesus called us to both “come” and “go”. He modeled this lifestyle for us by going away to spend time with the Father and then living out His day in both intimacy and mission. We never see Jesus get flustered by a turn of events and have to call “time out” to circle the boys for a holy huddle. He lived in communion with His Father and “ministered” out of that communion.

Growing up, I always assumed that Jesus must have had a playbook or a script… “Hey guys, today we heal a woman with an issue of blood, next week we feed the 5,000.” But that is not how it happened. Paul tells us that Jesus put all of that aside, though He had every right to carry a playbook, so He could become one of us. He was fully God and fully man. Jesus, tells us that He only did what He saw the Father doing, and only said what He heard Him speak.

In other words, He didn’t have a script. He just walked as a Son, living in close communion with His Dad.

That brings me to a promise that Jesus made as He was about to leave the earth. In Matthew 28 at the end of the “Great Commission”, Jesus said… “And I will be with you…” For years I had taught from this passage, but over these past few months, the joy of this promise has been gripping my heart. Then my friend Erik shared a word with us as we gathered in St. Louis.

Grace awaits you in the harvest field.

I started thinking about that, and was reminded of the intimacy we can experience when we go WITH Jesus into the harvest. There is a grace that is there, when we step out and share Jesus with others that is unique and precious. Paul even told Philemon that he was praying that he would be “active in sharing his faith” so that he could gain a full understanding of God’s goodness. (Philemon 6) So when we preach the gospel, it not only builds up the hearer(s) but releases understanding of God’s goodness to our own hearts.

The promise at the end of the “Great Commission” reminds me of something else that Jesus told Peter and Andrew at one of their first encounters. In Mark 1:18, Jesus says “Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.” Another way of translating that would be to say…

following me will make you a fisher of men

Why? Because Jesus was, and still is, a fisher of men. He said He came to seek and to save the lost. Then he told His own disciples that He was sending them out in the same way the Father had sent Him. Jesus told these two “prospects”, if you leave those nets behind and follow me, I am going to show you a whole new way to fish for men.

I shared a lot of this stuff at a church yesterday. It was fun to talk about the “Great Commission” and intimacy, and how we all get to share in the fullness of God’s heart. Then this morning I read Isaiah 9 and saw a phrase that got my heart beating fast. Verse 3 says ” You have multiplied the nation And increased its joy; They rejoice before You According to the joy of harvest, As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.” I like the talk about increasing joy, but it was the phrase “the joy of the harvest” that stood out to me most.

I thought to myself, we have only had a small sample of that kind of joy. God is so good to us. He has loved us and adopted us as His own. Then He invites to go with Him to make disciple of the nations and share His love and grace with anyone who will receive. But what does it say about His heart, that He has not just called us to go labor in the harvest fields, but He has reserved a special joy for us as we go with Him, the joy of the harvest.

Jesus, we want to go WITH you!

Students Learning of the Goodness of God

Combined with Brad Mckoy and Lindsay Ellyson from Campus America, we held a 12 hour prayer gathering 10am-10pm of pressing in and praying for the lost, for the grace and mercy of God over our generation and pressing into worshipping God. It was an amazing intimate time with the Father and gaining the Father’s heart. Students from different schools were worshipping together and united in prayers and vision-Grove City, Geneva College and Duquesne University students. After 11.5 hours everyone was pressing in and someone felt from the Lord that there was someone there who needed prayer for healing. So Brad made an anouncement and then a man walks forward who has had arthritus in his left knee and had surgery and still lots of pain. Students earlier in the day had received prophetic words about having potential and being used by God. And now the perfect opportuntiy came. Anyone who had seen God move and heal someone before stepped back and let these students lay their hands on this man and pray for him. After praying twice 90% of the pain was gone! God completed his work removing all remaining pain as they pressed in a third time in prayer. Watching this man run up and down the aisle checking out his knee, these young world changers see in the physical realm how good God really is, just incase they didn’t know it before.

Mobilizing Student Church Planters in the Region

I am so excited to be making plans to get onto a few of the campuses in our region and start mobilizing students to plant Student Churches on their campuses. Our region is loaded with schools, in fact there are 85 four year clooeges with in a 100 miles of our house. That is incredible.
As we have been praying about where to begin, we have identified 10 schools that have become our strategic “First 10″. Allegheny College, Grove City College, Kent State University, Youngstown State University, Slippery Rock University, Geneva College, Robert Morris Universtiy, Duquesne University, The University of Pittsburgh & Carnegie Mellon University.
I look forward to being on campus at each of these campuses during the month of October. Erik and Jen Fish will be bringing their family to spend the month with us. We are looking forward to taking teams to these campuses and a few others to worship, pray, share the good news about Jesus and to encourage Student Church planters to reach their campus.
Be praying for us and for these first 10 campuses. We are expecting a fruitful month asd we position ourselves to be a part of calling in a great harvest in this generation.

View First 10 Campuses in a larger map

3 in 3 – Campus a Strategic Mission Field

3 Quick Facts in 3 Minutes – 3 reasons why campuses in the US are one of the most strategic mission fields on the planet. 1. International Students 2. The campus is an atmosphere where students are “open” to new ideas 3. 18 – 25 year old’s are the most unreached age group in the nation.

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