Hmmm…

If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work.  Rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean…

Antoine de Saint Exupery

faithful resistance…

About a two months ago, I started struggling again with my calling to go to Seattle.  Through 2 circumstances, I began to question if I should be going, but to my surprise God was doing a different work.  He was not trying to get me to see my confirmation in calling or to steer me out of that direction.  No, He was taking me into the dark chamber of my heart were the crap is.  I saw things in there that frightened me.  I always knew they were there, but since I always ignored this chamber, I had no idea how bad the situation has gotten.  You know, it is like knowing you have to take the garbage out, but in laziness you let it sit in your kitchen a little longer than it needed it to and the next thing you know, you have created a new species of flies.  What I saw in that chamber surprised me and embarrassed me.  I had no idea that I have grown to be insecure in my faith due to my inadequacies, identity confusion, fears, and selfish desires.  When I saw that, how I longed for a tangible sin issue to be my problem.  That would be easier to tame.  This moment now became an opportunity for me to decide what to with this room.  Close the door and turn my back and know what lingers there.  Or make it beautiful.  I craved beauty and said… “let’s do this.”  This is a beautiful mess.  It is all about perspective.  

arrived…

I and a close companion of mine, have been dreaming the dream that God placed in our hearts over a year ago.  God stirred in us to go out the Pacific Northwest to plant a church in Seattle.  From that moment on, it has been prayer, conversating, worrying, laughing, and speculating what the future holds for us and the team that God had brought together.

I have never been to Seattle.  Today I stepped foot on our future new land.  But, with each and every step that we took, I sensed God whispering to me, “This city, I give you.  Take as much of it as you can.”  Our promised land.  God told us to go, we went. 

My heart all of a sudden feels a great burden for Seattle.  I won’t get into all the particulars yet, but I sense that we are here to bless and to proclaim freedom and to be cocreators with our creator God in order to restore its original beauty.  I do not doubt that.  Nor do I believe that it is not beautiful.  It definitely is.  But it is only a glimpse.  The Kingdom of God, the mustard seed, has been planted.  We pray that the Kingdom of God comes in power (of blessing instead of cursing) and not in word (plain talk).