Category Archives: Blog

lessons from a discipleship training school

I recently came across notes from my nine-month participation in the Antioch Discipleship School in 2013-2014. Just reading the notes stirred me again, made me want more of Jesus, stoked the fires of my faith and gave me pause to consider where I have slowed down my race.

I like to share things, so here we go. These are random quotes and notes that I managed to write down during this very intensive training time, along with some of my expanded thoughts.

It’s not about improvement in us, it’s about greater dependence on God.

Stop. Just stop trying to get better at being a Christian, and start shifting your trust. You trust yourself more than you trust God, if you’re honest with yourself. You trust what you can see far more than you trust what God has said. You rely on what makes sense to you, what is the most logical decision to make, rather than trusting that God will come through if you would be willing to wait on Him. He tells you He’s here, He sees, He knows, and He loves. Lean into that. Rest in that. It’s time to learn that every single thing is in His hand. To know that His heart for you is good, and in a trust fall, He will always, always catch you. Self-improvement is not God’s mandate to you. Surrender and trust…that’s the call to your soul.

“If we lower the bar so that we can live up to it, we miss the whole point:  total dependence on God.”

The twisting of His Word in order to make it easier to live up to it is happening all over the place. Resist the urge to join the party. The whole point is that we cannot live up to it apart from the power of God. We must learn to depend on Him for the power to obey Him!

“I’ve never known anyone close to the Lord who gets up late.” Watchman Nee

This was connected to a teaching on spending time with Jesus that re-kindled a fire in me. Rising early to meet with Jesus is one of my favorite activities, so I will just say this to you if you’re on the fence –

You will never regret it. In the end, you will never wish you would have kept sleeping instead, or that you would have done something else with your precious time. You just won’t. He is worth it, I promise.

I didn’t ‘find’ Jesus. I ran from Him and He pursued me and caught me.

If I could eliminate one phrase from the Christian vocabulary it would be anything that sounds like we found Jesus. We see our relationship with Him differently when the truth finally sinks in that we were running from God, and it was His pursuit of us that changed everything about our lives. We didn’t find Him, He found us, because we were the ones who were lost, not Him. He was the One looking for us, not the other way around.

Whatever you think it looks like to you, Jesus found you. Let gratitude well up. Let yourself feel so humbled, so aware that He came after YOU. Because He wanted YOU. Let the scales fall from your eyes so that you can see that you didn’t stumble into God while you were looking for the answer to a deep question, or something to make your life have meaning. You were chosen and pursued by the God who created you for Himself. The God who chose to bear the punishment that your sin deserved so that He wouldn’t be without you for eternity. Rejoice, because the One who pursued you, caught you.

“We live in a world that says how we feel is more important than what is true.” – Ricky Chelette

Yes. This. All I can add is: Truth trumps feelings. It has to, because our feelings are unsteady, fickle, transient things. Truth remains truth no matter what we’re feeling. We must stop telling people that how they feel is what’s most important. There is a difference between acknowledging and even validating the way someone feels, and helping them believe that their feelings are the barometer we use for decisions.

More nuggets…

Everything you do for God needs to be the overflow of intimacy with God.

You want to change the world? Let Jesus love you, and let people watch.

God is more committed to fulfilling His will for your life than you are to finding His will.

Sometimes fears & doubts begin to feel so real that we call it wisdom.

Demons are not your biggest problem. It’s whether or not you are going to submit to Jesus.

The needs of this season are the testimonies of the next season.

God has called us to be a spiritual influence in our world. I exert influence, not because I have a stage, but because He has my heart.

Jesus was the greatest influencer in history, and He lived a suffering life. Am I willing to walk any path, even of suffering, in order to influence others and glorify God?

Humility is not a lack of confidence, it is confidence properly placed – in God.

No one can ruin your life, if God owns it.

We try to comfort ourselves out of difficulty. God wants to comfort us in the midst of difficulty.

Honor is celebrating who someone is without stumbling over who they are not.

God is more interested in why I do what I do, than in what I do.

You are a missionary. It’s not the plane ride that makes you one.

This was just a drop in the bucket of all I learned in the Discipleship School. It was an incredible nine months of my life that I would go back and do again if I could. To anyone who will be going through the school this Fall, I say this – soak. it. up. Take copious amounts of notes, and save them all! You will go back through them many times over the years and find both encouragement and conviction just when you need them.

this is how we fight our battles

That cancer thing tho, right? Beastly is what it is. I bet you know someone who’s fighting it. We could stand on a busy street and point in any direction and find someone who is doing battle with the cancer Goliath on some level. Maybe that someone is you. Can I say it sucks? I think I can (my blog and all). And I’ve had cancer, so lemme just tell you that sucks is the right word. I was lucky. My cancer was found very early and a hysterectomy took it down. No chemo, no radiation. But the battle was still there, because fear was still there. And ain’t that just a fight and half when the diagnosis comes? Yeah, it is.

Right now, I have a friend who is in the thick of battle with a very aggressive breast cancer. She’s a Jesus loving gem of a girl. Wife. Mother to 3 very young kids.

Everyone’s fighting stance looks different. But one thing is certain – worship is a vital position for us to take during any battle. Worship is an incredible weapon, and I can attest to its power to bring fear to its knees and make faith the biggest giant in the room.

Heidi posted something to the Caring Bridge site that I think will bless you, even if you aren’t in a cancer war at the moment (because everyone is fighting some kind of battle, right?). I got her permission to reprint it here for you:

Surrounded

Journal entry by Heidi Wenzel — Mar 5, 2019

“Another round of chemo tomorrow. It always has me getting ready. Gearing up. Ready to face another round of battle.
But our family has a particular way that we fight our battles. And Jon and I have tried to cultivate a particular family culture in our home. Through good times and bad. If not every day, at least every week. We worship. At home. With the kids. We put the music on loud and we sing and we dance and we run and we twirl and we bow with our faces to the hardwood floor and we leap and we clap and we worship the King of Kings.

And we believe. We believe that our worship impacts the King, the kingdom, and our very own circumstances. We believe that it blesses our hearts, changes our perspective, and powerfully affects our circumstances. And in this particular season we believe our praise and worship defeats cancer. 
Would you dare to worship with us? Believe that our worship could conquer this enemy. This cancer.
This would not even be close to the first time that the worshipping is a catalyst for the conquering. One of my favorite Old Testament stories is found in 2 Chronicles 20 about a king named Jehoshaphat and a battle with vast armies from neighboring countries. A battle. A battle won by praise and shouts, not by weapons and strength. A battle that this leader was wise enough to recognize was not his, but the Lord’s.

It’s so worth reading the account for yourself, but here’s the summary. King Jehoshaphat receives a report that multiple armies are on their way to conquer them. The first thing this king does is call a fast and all the people inquire of the Lord as to what they should do. All of the people. One of my favorite verses of the story vs. 13, “All the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones. Stood there before the Lord.” That’s right, the little ones too. Our little ones are with us, looking to the Lord, seeing how He will answer, what He will do. Anyway, a prophet stands up and declares to the whole assembly, “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.” (Verse 15) He says the Lord is going to deliver them, they don’t have to be afraid, they just need to stand firm and watch the Lord gain the victory for them!
So then the king goes on and does something so incredible. So significant. So counterintuitive. He prepares his forces by sending out the worshippers as the front line. First. He calls to his people to have faith, and acts out his own faith by not sending out the greatest fighters or the biggest weapons, but rather believing what God has said and sending out the singers. The worshippers. “Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out AT THE HEAD of the army saying: ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.” And just as the Lord had said, the people of Judah watched the Lord give them the victory. God himself set ambushes on the armies and they literally ended up killing and destroying each other rather than Judah.
Worship and victory.

Would you be so bold as to worship with us? Not just pray, but worship with us. Worship in the midst of a cancer diagnosis. Worship through a hard season of chemo. Worship as the army surrounds and invades. Worship as the waters rise and the fire surrounds. Worship as even the waves crash over us. Would you worship with us? It’s what we are doing. It’s what we have chosen to do. Give him our praise. Give him our worship. “

If you want to read their story, pray for them, or just follow along on their journey – here is the link to Heidi’s Caring Bridge site:

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/heidiwenzel

carpe diem, church

This past Tuesday at Lifegroup we did a little digging in that first chapter of Acts.

“While He was together with them, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father’s promise…
So when they had come together, they asked Him, “Lord, are You restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?”” – Acts 1:4-6

World changers. Miracle workers. Birthers of the Church. But they didn’t have a full understanding of what this whole thing was all about. After three years of life on life with Jesus, they still didn’t get the big picture. They thought one thing, while He was planning something else. Story of my life. Anyone else?

God isn’t intimidated by what we don’t know, or by the smallness of the picture we can see. He still sends us out.

“He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by His own authority.” – Acts 1:7

But inquiring minds have always wanted to know so they built an information highway and now we have literally trillions of bits of things we can know. But we still don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I believe our not knowing and therefore not controlling is at the root of our rampant anxiety. I also believe that our freedom begins with the truth – 

There are things that are not for us to know. As Christ followers, our need to know what’s coming and when it’s coming must take a knee.

Only God has the authority to set the times of our lives.  Not luck or fate or the universe or the government or our employer or that internet prophet guy and certainly not the devil. Take heart Church, our times are in God’s hands.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” – Acts 1:8

I can tell people my testimony without the power of the Holy Spirit. So can you. That isn’t the “witness” that Jesus was talking about in this statement. 

The Greek word for “witness” = martys. It’s where martyr comes from. But it has other meanings. In this verse it means “ those whose lives and actions testified to the worth and effect of faith…”

You can tell people you’re a Christian and what God has done for you all day long but if your life doesn’t speak of the value of faith, then you are not His witness. Speaking words doesn’t take the power of the Holy Spirit, but turning those words into the way you live your life does. Jesus gave us the power of His Spirit to enable us to live a life of witness, not just speak words that testify. 

If we say we are a man or woman of faith, but we live in fear of tomorrow, we are not His witnesses. If every bump or wave that hits us sends us into anxiety or “fix-it” mode, we are not His witnesses.

If we say we are a man or woman of faith while we tend to our collection of idols of money, fame, attention, approval, escape, and comfort and fill-in-your-blank,  we are not His witnesses.

And we should not wonder why there is no power in our lives.

We cannot live by both fear and faith. We cannot build both our own kingdoms and the Kingdom of God. We cannot live sacrificially while indulging our flesh. We cannot lay down our lives and love them too. 

The Church cannot live a double life, and have the power of the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses.

Those 4 verses were the last words Jesus spoke to them on this earth. Of everything He could have said to them, He chose to promise them the Holy Spirit so that they could be His witnesses. He chose to tell them He would give them the power to have lives that match their words. Lives that testify to the value of faith in Christ. 

Honestly? The Church should be waiting in the upper room today, waiting for our turn to be filled with the power to be His witnesses. And by the Church, I mean me. And I mean you. Not them. Us. Because we are the Church, you and I. We are the ones who need to have those last words of Jesus ringing in our ears. 

We are the ones today. Yesterday was theirs, and tomorrow will be for others. But this is our time to be filled with the Spirit of God and be His witnesses in all the earth. Today is our day. 

Carpe Diem, Church.

 

 

Marriage Matters—It’s Subtraction

I was thinking about marriage the other day, as I was getting ready for work. It took a hot minute for me to realize God was present, directing the entire conversation I was having with myself. 

I pondered my young, selfish view of marriage so many years ago, and then how many people I see today who have that same view. Oh, it’s not a conscious attitude. If it were we would surely correct ourselves. It shows up in our words and actions, without ever making an appearance in our brain (so it would seem). 

It’s the idea that when we get married, we are adding a spouse to our life. 

And then we’ll just go on with all our dreams, with all our habits and ways – we’ll just have someone else joining us. 

We don’t really think that deep about things like how we’ll spend our money now, how we’ll spend our time. We go into marriage enamored with the idea of sharing our life with this other person. Our life. Not their life. 

{And let’s be honest, many of us don’t think past the relief that now, we won’t be alone. That’s really as far as we got in considering this marriage gig.}

We don’t count the cost of marriage. We don’t think about all the ways our lives will no longer be our own, or about the fact that we are going from independence to dependence. We don’t consider that our plans and our dreams and our passions will not be center stage anymore – there is someone else’s plans, dreams, and passions in the picture now. 

We don’t let it sink in that we aren’t adding someone to our life, we are dying to our old life to begin this new life. We’re giving up our right to do anything our own way anymore, our right to live independent, to spend ourselves on what we want. To chase our own dreams, pursue our own plans. Marriage is about two becoming one, moving as one, living as one.

“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”  (Matthew 19:6)

Marriage is not addition, its subtraction.

When we get that and choose accordingly, our marriage will flourish. When we don’t, it will break.

And when I bent over to spit the toothpaste out, God bent down with me and whispered… 

That same view of marriage is permeating the Gospel today. 

God forgive us for allowing people to believe that they are adding You to their life. 

“Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” – Revelation 19:9

declarations

Hard week. A member of our lifegroup lost her 23-year-old son on Saturday. We are all a bit in shock, I think, but at the same time, our church community has gathered like an army around this family. It’s a beautiful picture to watch. If you think about it, lift up the Thomas family in prayer. They are living every parents’ worst fear.

At lifegroup last night I felt led to have us do some declaring. So after worship, we got down to it. With 3 pages of declarations in hand, we went around the table taking turns reading them. It got a little loud at times, lemme tell ya. These women de.clared some things! Vehemently. Passionately. Beautifully.

It left us wanting more.

I don’t know the mechanics of it. Can’t answer why. But I do know this – there is power in the room when truth is being declared. There is a fierce kind of faith that rises up when the scriptures are spoken over those in the room. When we declare the truth over ourselves and over our lives, lies begin to break.

{Because a lie from the enemy cannot withstand the sword of the Spirit.}

We will have ‘declaration nights’ more often. And hopefully, that will turn into declaration mornings for us individually. And declaration days. Until declaring truth is how we live life.

who has heard?

“I know that the Lord has given you this land and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and everyone who lives in the land is panicking because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings you completely destroyed across the Jordan. When we heard this, we lost heart, and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below.” – Joshua 2:10-11

Do you know who hears about that time God made $600 appear in our bank account? Or the day I had a horrible toothache and He told me to lay hands on my jaw and command healing to come, and it came? Or any of the many times God has been spectacularly evident for me?

Believers. Other Christians that are like-minded, who worship like me, believe like me, use the same lingo I use. That’s who hears about the exploits of God in my life. Know why? Because they won’t think I’m weird. They won’t look at me like I just grew another head. They won’t walk away thinking I’m “one of those people”, and try to figure out how to avoid lengthy conversations with me in the future.

So God is dealing with me right here in Joshua’s story. Dealing with my need for people, both believers and unbelievers, to approve of my walk with God. At the same time, He is showing me the bigger picture (because there is always a picture that is bigger than me and my life) of the Church.

So let’s talk about that. It’s much more interesting than the angst I am dealing with on a personal level as God exposes motives and various items of junk in my heart.

“I know that the Lord has given you this land and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and everyone who lives in the land is panicking because of you.” (v. 9)

You know those toys, the things that show you one picture if you hold it a certain way, but if you shift your hand just slightly, a different picture appears? Let’s do that with this passage.

If we hold it one way, we see the real story taking place of two spies and a prostitute having a conversation. But let’s shift our hand ever so slightly.

Now we see the spiritual picture of God’s people and the enemy (satan and his demons). We see the realm that we miss if we don’t think to look past the natural.

The Church’s mission is to expand the Kingdom of God, not just by moving into more and more territory, but by coming into a territory and making disciples there. Since the Kingdom of God is wherever the power and authority of God are ruling and reigning, when people come to salvation, they are now a place where that is happening. The more people that have the power and authority of God in them through the Holy Spirit, the larger the Kingdom of God becomes. Make sense?

So if we see the story here from that place, then Rahab’s comments are very revealing. They tell us that the (spiritual) rulers of any territory that we are about to head into are panicking, and terror has fallen upon them. Because they know. They’ve heard of God’s power in His Church. They know that our God is Lord of heaven and earth.

But do we know it? Are we aware that there are territories waiting for the Church to come in and conquer the darkness there? Do we understand who we are, what we have been commanded, and Who is with us in it?

Or are we still looking at the picture in the physical and getting overwhelmed by what we see?

If the Church is going to be strong and courageous, then it has to start with me (and you). I have to understand that when I declare the power of God in my life, telling of the seas He has parted and the mountains He has moved, I’m not just talking to the people in front of me. I’m declaring that my God is Lord of heaven AND earth to the darkness that is over the territory I’m in. And while the people in front of me may roll their eyes and think I’m weird, I know that the enemy begins to panic.

He panics because strong and courageous just entered his territory. And there can only be one reason she’s here.

So tell me, who has heard of your God? Not just the God who hates homosexuality or public schools or Democrats. That, honestly, does not make the enemy tremble, or people want to know Him.

Who has heard of the God who forgave your sin, who freed you from bondage, who healed your sickness, who provided for you when there was nothing left? The God who made a way when there wasn’t a way for you, who brought you through the fire unharmed? Who has heard about the God who changed you, who took you from darkness to light, from death to life?

Who has heard?

worth more

Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So don’t be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows. – Matthew 10:29-31

You are worth more.  

This is the place where Jesus first met me with my worth.

It took time, you know. Time to exchange worthless for worth more. To hand Him my lie and take His truth. But you are worth more became holy ground for me. Words the Holy Spirit whispered to a woman who walked head down for years. 

It slowly became my truth. My identity. But like an onion, the Word is peeled back for new revelation.

My fear of man is connected to the knowledge of my worth.

Jesus did not pull punches. There’s no bait and switch in His teachings. He makes it quite clear how the world is going to feel about us, His followers. 

You are blessed when they insult and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of Me.- Matthew 5:11

You will be hated by everyone because of My name. – Matthew 10:22

Then they will hand you over for persecution, and they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations because of My name. – Matthew 24:9-10

If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. – John 15:18

Nothing vague here. While we are commanded to love, we are never told we would be loved back. Isn’t that where we trip? Where we start tenderizing the truth so that it can be easily swallowed? Isn’t this where we try to get people to love our message so that they won’t reject us?

These musings and these holy words breathed out by a holy God have left me with this question – 

Do we fear man more than we fear God? Do I? Does knowing that I am worth more to God, release me to be ok being hated by man? It should, but I’m not sure it does. Are you?

Jesus knew what He was doing by sending His followers out into a broken and hateful world. He knew that when we go out with truth, we would be a minority, not a majority. He knew that most people are not going to accept us or the gospel we have been entrusted to carry. And yet, for the sake of the few, He still sends us, having equipped us to fearlessly go where we are not welcome.

“Look at the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they?” – Matthew 6:26

“But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So don’t be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows.”-

Do not worry and do not be afraid. You are worth more.

It is this knowing that is our equipping. The knowing of our true worth, our identity as worth more, that makes us unafraid to wade into the wrath of man to find the ones who are willing to believe the truth we bring.

And all of that is good but the gold, for me, is simple. 

Jesus knew we would be afraid. He knew that we’re all still a bit broken, still seeking approval, still wanting to find a way to make following Him comfortable. He doesn’t despise our broken bits, He speaks to them by telling us how much we mean to our Father.

Jesus told us we are worth more, but then He hung from a cross and showed us that we are worth everything.

That’s gold that I hold close. It makes me feel a little fearless to know my value to my Father, so that my value to mankind doesn’t become a goal. 

And when I am treated as worth less, “you are worth more” steadies my heart and lifts my head. 

Beloved, when we are tempted to believe what the world says about us, when we are walking with our head down – the Word of God is the truth we need. It is the scriptures that get into our soul with the nourishment it needs for healing. 

Stop looking for your worth among the broken. You won’t find it there. You are worth more than this world will ever speak over you. So let the Word of God speak truth to you, and don’t ever stop listening.

Let it make you fearless.