Can a System Ever Love? (#461) — http://thegodjourney.com/2014/11/14/can-a-system-ever-love-461/

Outside the box of religious obligation, lies a road less traveled into the heart of the father's affection. Slinging freedom all over the place, this is the God Jan, the God Jan, the God Jan. Just back from my Texas Southern swing, from Houston, actually the Woodlands, to Austin, to San Antone, which is actually Burnie, Texas, and then down to Corpus Christi and got a chance to meet, as I always do on these trips, a whole lot of people in a whole lot of different stages of their journey. And as it seems to be, I have a great time hanging out with people. Hi, I'm Wayne Jacobson, and this is The God Journey. Boy, travel has changed for me. I've noticed that more, I guess, on this last trip, and it's not like this one was so different. It's just the culmination of so many things. I've slowly been one out of the whole idea when I used to travel was, either stay with people or stay in a hotel, and pretty much enjoy the friendship and camaraderie of that, and then come out once in a while for some kind of meeting, seminar, if it's a conference, doing a teaching thing. And I just, I can't believe how much that has changed. Even to now, we usually set up meetings. We usually set up their times on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, night, Tuesday, whatever. If you want to meet Wayne, y'all come, people from the area come. And we get to have a bigger conversation. They're rarely teaching times. Although I think there's more teaching goes on in a conversation than goes on if I was working from a list of notes and seven points and trying to get people to understand something. I ain't books and there's other ways to pass on information. When I'm actually with people, what I enjoy most is engaging the conversations. Let's them open up. Let's let me engage them, see what God does. And what I'm telling you, and the trips get more and more, I don't know how to say it. I mean, people from all across the spectrum, from people at the point of temptation and brokenness and hurt and overwhelming need to people that are just being blessed and enjoying God's bounty and living in that space and just having time to be with them, whether that's in those meeting things that we arrange or as often happens now, people say, can we grab some time tomorrow? Whatever, can I take you out for lunch, breakfast, whatever? And I end up spending my whole time, which means my email backs up, my any kind of blogging, any other work that Wayne does doesn't get done much anymore when I travel. It's not that I don't have computers with me. So if I need, if I have a space of time, but those spaces of time have got very narrow because people are really open to an engagement that goes beyond meeting times. And I've enjoyed that. I've enjoyed the conversations. I think a lot of stuff happens when you're just hanging out with people and questions come up and thoughts come up and struggles come up that probably wouldn't come up if we were all making nice in a meeting. So back from Texas had a great time. My thanks to those of you who hosted me and helped me out and get from place to place. And again, just loved it very much next weekend as of November 22nd, for those of you that are in the Southern California area, I get you down. You do this all over the world. You never do it at home. Well, we are doing it at home. We're doing it at our home. So next Saturday, November 22nd, Sarah and I are just going to open our home. If you want to come, you have to RSVP though because we're not just sending out our address to everybody because I travel a bit and I want Sarah to not have to worry about who may have our address. So if you'd like to come, you need to let us know. And we'll work it out so you can come and join us on next Saturday. You know, we're going to put a cap on that just because our home only holds so many people. And so if it gets too big, we'll have to cut it back and do another one down the road. But if you're around the area, like to come join us. Please feel free to do that. Just want to mention the Kenya thing again. I know we've talked about it a bit, collecting money to help with some of the ongoing needs there. If you want to help us, someone gave us a pretty sizable check last week that really helps us down the road. And I'm grateful for that. As I'm grateful for every nickel and dime, $25, $10 that people send us to help the brothers and sisters there. They're overwhelmingly grateful and we're trying to stock a dispensary and look at other ways to improve. Not just to relieve the suffering that's there now, though that's great. Our eye has also been how do we create opportunities for them to go on and have the means by which they can provide for themselves and watch God provide for them, not necessarily through other folks. So that's a lot more expensive. We could just handle the needs, but then we're going to handle it forever. So in the short term, it takes a lot more to help them with because not only are we helping build a dispensary or wells or schools, but we're also trying to give them enterprises that will help meet those in an ongoing way. So if you want to participate with us in Kenya, you'd be more than welcome to do so. Let me just touch some email here. Maybe we'll get stuck there all day because I've been gone a few weeks, so what you heard when I was gone was we're pre-recorded. A lot of things happened since, not only with Finding Church, the new book, but lots of other things. So in fact, I looked on Amazon the other day. We're a number four. I checked today, but we were number four on books about church life, church institutions, structures. Number four, which I don't know how that's happening. The book is not out in any kind of public way other than this podcast, my websites and Amazon and you folks talking it up in various venues. And I have appreciated those of you that have done reviews on Amazon. Thank you. Those of you that are putting quotes out in your social media, things that have touched you and sharing a bit of not about the book, but about how the books touched you, those things make a big difference and other people coming to know it and engage it. And I'm grateful. I'm really grateful for what's happening there. I want to read a couple of letters starting off. This is from Arla. And I kind of have been debating whether to read this or not, because I have noticed not only from my email, but also as I travel around, the Angel Feathers Gold Dust podcast that we've done has stirred an awful lot of very passionate emotions. And I don't mean passionate on one side or the other. I mean all across the spectrum, people who defend it as essential, people who have been hurt by it and disillusioned by it, how much of it is flim flam and how much of it is genuine. And it has, it has taxed a lot of emotions. Arla wrote this about the Angel Feathers Redo podcast. It was one of the best God Journey podcasts ever. One point of interest. If those of us who have had any connection with any of the healing ministries would be honest, we would all agree. We've at least wondered why God heals here and not there. Heals this one and not that one. I love the answer you two had for that question. Everything in me lit up with agreement that is truly about the relationship and not about anything we do, methods, or have faith or can claim and rebuke. And I, you know, I appreciate that. Not that we're, we've got to really ask those important questions. Because if, as one man said to me, this was in Texas last week, I have a problem with overindulgent white people celebrating gold dust while people are dealing with real pain and torment in a cruel world. Now that to me just kind of expresses the problem, particularly of the kinds of miracles that aren't bonafide miracles. I celebrate those, love those, however they happen. But there's other things that go on with imagined miracles and created illusions that we've tried to talk about here. And I know it makes some of you angry because doggone, it's real. It's all real and you want it to be real. And I get that. But I, for other people who've been in those things looking for a touch, they deal with, well, you know, why is God dropping gold dust on people who are already got great lives and the real healing, not just physical, but emotional, the way God touches in the deepest part of our soul goes undone. And that I, I really don't want to get in that much further. I know that'll probably spawn some other email, but let it lie, I guess, I would say. I got this from Jack and I, boy, I love this about the new book. He said, I find difficult reading it. The coffee stains are already bad enough that I won't be able to give my copy away. And the fluorescent orange highlights would indicate stops and starts that indeed added to the aforementioned coffee stains. My difficulty is a good one. You have some one-liners that literally make me put the book down, look out the window and hold my breath, almost as if I'm letting something go that has held me back. I am so encouraged to read what I have felt in my gut and the letting go has nothing to do with the system, but in my hope that a system, any system, would or could incubate or sustain life. That's why I read this email for that sentence right there. Nothing to do with the system, but in my hope that a system, any system, would or could incubate or sustain life. That's kind of the thing I came to, not only writing the book, but my discovery sense, working other people through it, with it is, man, how did we ever think that a system could reflect the fullness of the life of the transcendent God working in a transcendent church that is greater than anything we could maintain or manage? And why do we think that could work? And he goes on, So page 68, you wrote, I was caught between two worlds, the self-effort of performance based on religion and the new creation growing inside of me. I didn't know it at the time, but the two are incompatible. How gut-wrenchingly true that is, how hard it is to come to that reality if your hope has been in a Sunday morning system, or for that matter, a teacher, preacher, or anything man-made. It's still something that is sorting out in my heart, best put by you, learning to live alongside Jesus in the new creation. Thank you for writing this book. I see the years of your sweat and tears that have gone into finding church. I believe in another sense, we are finding Jesus our life. Thank you for helping peel back the curtain of the Father's love. Gosh, I wish you would see what was going on inside this heart of mine. Actually, no, Jack, met him about a year or so ago or more, hanging down in the southern reaches of these United States. And I appreciate the journey that he's on, and I get a little piece of his heart right here, but I understand this because I only see it in my life. I see it in other people's lives. I see it in some of the places we were in Texas this last week. There's people just open. This is an amazing moment. They're opening to something more real. And then the fresh touches of, I haven't put it all together yet, and I'm not all the comfortable about how people inside this thing are judging me, but I can't do it anymore. So I'm outside of it, but feeling all the stuff from now, the road signs I had to help me be at ease in my journey when I was part of a system, those road signs don't work anymore. I have to define success differently. I have to define life differently. I have to define fellowship differently. And there's this disorienting period, and I actually think it's lovely. I know it's painful for people in it. I think God probably looks at it and goes, this is so cool. This is so cool. They're opening up to something new. They're risking what's been comfortable for them before. And yeah, it's painful. Yes, it hurts, but hurt isn't always bad. There's a good kind of hurting that's opening us to a different reality. Yeah, what I know is when I talk to these people, I'll come back in two years, and if they don't get scared and retreat back to where they came from, if they just continue on this journey with Jesus, all that's going to settle out and as we've shared before, the gravity of the Moon begins to take over from the gravity of the Earth. It wants to pull us back and control us and contain us by the way world systems work and use the Moon as that analogy of God's gentle drawing to Himself and when our Apollo astronauts went to the Moon, they reach a point somewhere in that trajectory and it's a lot closer to the Moon than it is the Earth, but it's a struggle to get out of the grasp of the way the world works. And yet as we just continue to keep our eyes on Him and try and live in the space God's opened us to live in and believe the things He says rather than believe the things the world says, that gravity begins to take over and at some point you reach it where it's easier now to walk than it is to walk with Him than it was to jump through all the hoops to make other people in your life pleased with yet, it's a heck of a journey especially when your family's against you and your friends are against you and your dad's the pastor of the church and you're not feeling like you resonate there anymore. I get how all that is difficult and painful, I do, but man, it's a journey worth going on and it's transforming. Here's from Kimberly. I had an accident at Youth Church where I broke both my wrists. That's some accident. Something happened in Youth Church and Kimberly, we've exchanged some emails and she's really worked hard to in Youth Ministry stuff loves that kind of opportunity, but she said very unfortunate as I had three months off work, two wrists in plaster cast and two surgeries on my left wrist, needless to say, I need a lot of help, mainly practical help. My co-workers, family, flatmates and friends all came around me the people I was doing life with. They helped bathe me, wash my hair, tie my shoelaces, cook me dinners and so much more. However, my church did not do any of this but sent me two care packages from their care package program that the church had volunteers sending out to people in need from the congregation. In these packages, I received hand lotions, maybe seven different kinds, a pedicure set, nail set and some other things. The majority of things I received I could not use and in fact was almost an insult to receive items which reminded me that I could not use my hands. What a waste of money. What I really needed was people to come and make me dinner, drive me to the supermarket, etc. Perhaps the church felt good that they had done their part but by creating a system of giving care packages all the human contact, empathy and understanding of the real needs were lost. This was the first time I genuinely needed help. There were times I went without dinner because actually I couldn't get to the shop when it was raining. I couldn't go outside due to my cask getting wet. And this was the first time I had been the receiver of my church's giving system. It was a real let down. All other people in my life were able to help me yet my church people stayed disconnected. Just that I'd share with you because it's all making sense to me now how I felt so let down and I think from now on I won't be giving any money to pay off church mortgages or their giving programs. I would rather keep empathy for others by giving to them directly so I can actually see what they need. God is a relational God, not a God of programs. Man, that is so true. And what I love, Kimberly, and I love that God had people for you. Yeah, the quote unquote church people you had let you down. But friends, family, co-workers, flatmates, God had people to help you through this time. And I realize it's disappointing if you're working among a group of people you serve. But what Kimberly's discovering what so many of us are discovering is that you cannot contain love and care in a system. Now, you'd like to. You'd like to think, man, we could all cooperate and we could do this. When I was a pastor even I struggled with this. We made the comment from time to time, we think any human need is too important to entrust to the care of a system. I made talk like that even when I was in that thing. But it was a hard uphill fight. What I hoped would happen is if we have friendships, then those friendships will be what sustain us when we need help. What we can do to help others when they need it. Friendship will let you do things for people that you wouldn't choose to do. We need volunteers to go help somebody move on Saturday and it's all impersonal and most people won't volunteer. But if you have friends, you do things for friends that you won't do for strangers that you're committed to. And unfortunately, most times our systems are about teaching people to perform well inside that system and they really work to undermine relationships. And I say that in the same breath that there's never been a system I've been involved in in which Sarah and I did not end up with great friendships and friendships that we still have to this day. So I know it doesn't have to undermine them. It tries to. You've got to really make an effort to get to know people, to open up your life, to not play the performance game. It can't happen there. But I'll be honest. I think it's rare. I think more people are manipulating the system for whatever they want out of it. It becomes a consumer-based reality, not a servant-based one. Because you just don't serve things. You serve people. And at one point we had a number of elderly couples starting to attend our fellowship or had been attending and could no longer attend because of health things. And we wrestled with our elders. What do we do about this? And my thought was, man, if we could get everybody that's homebound, like Kimberly here, even though hers was short-term, but even some of our longer-term ones, if we could attach them to a home group, then they would have friendships with them and people would go by and check and see what the need is. And the idea floated and it was just, it wasn't workable. What we needed to do was put together a visitation team. And they did put together a visitation team of people who, musicians and such that would go to quote-unquote the shut-ins periodically and play some music, serve communion, you know, and it was, it started out fine. But there were so many of them that no friendships formed. You came there, held the service, moved on. And it wasn't the friend, two things that, one, friendship didn't happen with the people who really could use some friends because they need more than just a service. And on the other side of it, it didn't last long because the people that were doing it kind of got tired of it and people started to miss. That was hard to get a team together. And it didn't last more than six to eight months before people weren't doing it anymore because systemic care is not the same as loving people from your heart. And when you love them, you engage them. And as you engage them, life happens. And that's the idea that somehow we humans can create a system that will work for people like that. My goodness, I just, I just don't see how that works. And I think that's what we're beginning to discover. And so yes, there is disappointment when people you think should have to care. Don't really care. And I get that email oh, 10 or 12 times a week. You know, I left X, Y, and Z congregation been gone for two years. You realize no one has contacted me. No one misses me because in part, it doesn't incubate real relationships just because you sit in a meeting with someone. And you can, you can take that to your job. You can take that anywhere. If you're just in meetings with people, friendships don't grow. Friendships grow in conversation and time away from agendas and away from performance. And it's just getting to know people. As I said, I just came back from this trip in Texas and it's true of every trip. I'm one place for three days, one place one day, one place for four days, and one place for two days. And I don't ever come away from being with people, being in someone's home that I don't feel like after even a day or two, I leave with a great tearing in my heart that I could be friends with these people if we lived closer and had greater proximity. That I would enjoy these people in my life, but I'm moving on. I'm moving on to the next group of people. And when people get with each other in a sense of honesty, I think that's important. And I also think a sense of playfulness is important. We're not together over hard stuff. We're actually enjoying each other, celebrating the life God has given us, no matter if that's in the middle of pain or struggle or not. I find as much endearment actually in people's struggle. I find a lot of endearment whether struggle with sin, struggle against a physical need, struggle against what they're feeling from their family and friends, a rejection because they're no longer fitting into the thing they want them to fit into. I feel that pain and I'm with them and I enjoy the conversations that that's a part of. And when I leave, I genuinely, there's something in my heart that misses the people that I go away from. I haven't figured out I keep track of all those people down the road. I just trust if God has this force to cross paths again, they're going to contact me. I'm going to contact them, maybe a phone call, maybe an email. We'll just see how that unfolds. But I can't think of a place that I've been where I've went away saying, man, I couldn't live there. There's nobody there to hang out with. I always meet people that are great to hang out with and in the deepest part of our hearts, we're all having that kind of need and calling. And I want to read Liz's letter. It's a long one. And I got this a long time ago. I found it deep in my file as one I was going to read. And I'm not sure exactly how long ago, nor to the podcast to which she's referring. This is from Liz. About six months ago, before I left the fellowship, I was very involved in. I felt the Lord challenge me as to how I would survive on a desert island. That's kind of a weird moment. God saying, how would you survive on a desert island? She said, it seemed a strange thought. But I started pondering and realized quite quickly that my dependence was on the folks around me and my self worth very much related to my busyness and that organization. I was in fact, so busy serving that I didn't have any time for people. There was no time to visit my family, no time to engage with people outside the fellowship. My six nights, a week involvement was my choice, not a requirement. But looking back, I realized that I really loved the validation it gave me as a person. When my time there was over, I did find myself on a desert island in a manner of speaking. Now, I want you to catch what she really said there. She said, my involvement was my choice. But I got so involved with this systemic thing because it validated me. That's the one thing it offers. It offers validation. And at the other hand, it is robbing her from the kind of connections with family and friends that really make up life, that make up a key component of life. She said, several months later, I woke one morning feeling so desperately lonely. I was single in my mid-30s and all friends in social context in my age group were still in the institution and I was unclean. Boy, have you felt that? As I walked down my hall towards the kitchen that morning, I literally cried out, Lord, I'm so lonely. And as I turned into the kitchen, I was literally enveloped in his presence. Tears of joy and relief just flowed from my eyes as I experienced the arms of his love enfolding and holding me and his peace filling me. It was just the confirmation I needed to know I was where he wanted me to be at that time. I can hear other people. There's more I'll continue than it would live. But I can think of people just saying, man, I could go for a good dose of that. Particularly people who are feeling that uncleanliness of the group they were a part of and the isolation and the loneliness. What I want to encourage you toward, and I think God does this in a variety way, it can be this emotionally overwhelming as it was for Liz. It can be much gentler. But I think the real fix for those kinds of isolated lonely realities is an engagement with God. However he chooses to engage you and when you can relax enough out of the pressures of this world to recognize how he's engaging you and to relax into that reality that's where this is so good. And it's not a matter of finding a better theology and trying to work it out and trying to get people who don't validate to validate you now because you have a better way of viewing the Gospel so you buy them books and you torture them with your way of thinking because you're still looking for the validation that gets consumed when God engages you. And that's what I love about his love. We all have lots of questions. We all have lots of disappointments and we all want God to answer for them somehow. But one engagement with his love one touch of his reality consumes all those other questions. They don't even necessarily get answered or people don't get to know that you're right. It just suddenly becomes not important that they do. And then beyond even the pain they've caused you when it's no longer important that they validate you what you'll find is a softening in your heart towards them. And now you can turn around and love people who couldn't love you when you needed it most because God's done a work in the heart. Now that process I don't know Liz doesn't describe it here. I will tell you the process I just talked about going from needing validation to risking it to being disappointed and not having it to turn around and loving the very people who are creating this uncleannliness of that idea of you. That's years. That's not days. That's not weeks. That's come learn to live in bigger space. Come to him. Open to him. Let him engage you. Show you. This is not quick. I guess that's the hardest thing when I do travel around talk to people a bit is we want it to be quick. We want it to go out to fix all this temptation, all that struggle, all that need for validation overwhelm me with an emotive experience of God's reality and then I'll be all fixed and I'll be fine for a while. And it's unrealistic to create that expectation. I love that Liz had a moment like this. I don't know how long she was on her desert island before that kind of moment comes. I love when the moment comes. I love as people are finding their way into greater freedom in life with him. That's the joy of this journey. It's the joy of knowing him and then being loved by him and then letting that love work in our hearts. And that's a good long journey. And it's not always easy. And sometimes in the middle of that journey some old temptations and struggles return and you might slip up and mess up some way. You kind of promise God you wouldn't ever again and then God invites you into bigger space and you realize grace is bigger than my failure. Grace is bigger than the fact that I couldn't pull it off today and his love keeps coming to us and that journey takes shape. Now I want to go on with Liz's story. So she says since hearing the podcast a couple of weeks back I've been pondering and would probably now liken my desert experience to time in an isolation ward of an infectious disease hospital. Until the religious sickness had permeated my being had been brought under control it was important for me to be isolated. It was good for me to come to terms with a fact that I've been contaminated and helpful for me to recognize to some extent the symptoms of my condition. I love that paragraph. I love that people sometimes when they end up feeling isolated it's like this is horrible. I need friends. I've got to fill up what I lost back there and where is it and why doesn't God provide it instead of and I've tried to encourage people with this reason it takes a couple of years for God to bring you into bigger space. Relax. Go on that journey. Sometimes isolation is God's way of inviting us deeper because we fill our lives with noise and people because we're afraid to be with Him and I think we're really afraid to know what's on the inside. We really use so much noise in our world to medicate what feels lonely or weak or broken inside and yet it's their inside stuff that Jesus wants to touch and change and sometimes in the isolated moments if it helps us lean into Him and His reality can be incredibly helpful. She says, Liz continues, one of the most important realizations for me over this time in subsequent years has been that my emotions are fickle and not to be trusted. So my bottom line has become Lord, I love you and I trust you and it's from that point and in that knowledge that I'm totally and unconditionally loved by my Father. I endeavor to address whatever set of circumstance comes my way. Of course, I still get messed up in my emotions but then I'm reminded they are fickle can be manipulated and are not necessarily to be trusted. He however is never fickle cannot be listed manipulated and can be totally trusted. I love that. A lot of discussion about emotions. I got an email this week, you know what? What about our emotions? People encourage me just to ignore them and I like that I think Liz is not saying the answer is to ignore your emotions as if that's even possible. You're sad, you're hurt, you're in despair. Go ahead, try and ignore that. See how well that works and what you're going to find is it doesn't work and if that's the answer then you're not good at the answer and then people who are thinking they're trying to help you actually get to condemn you because you are too focused on your emotions. What Liz is describing, I think our emotions are gifts from God. If you don't see your emotions as a gift without them you couldn't feel joy, you couldn't feel fullness, you couldn't enjoy life, you wouldn't laugh. Emotions are such a rich thing. On the other hand, when they're turned dark, when the emotion is pain and despair and anger and jealousy and all those kinds of things, ignore it. I don't think you ignore it any more than you ignore the red light on your dashboard that says you've got an oil or gas or water temperature problem. You don't ignore the light, you deal with the light. It's not, and I don't mean you fix the light because the light's not the problem. The emotion is not the problem. It's pointing to something. It's pointing to something damaged, something broken. Do you trust your emotions and just do whatever your emotions tell you to do? No, that's not going to be helpful either. I like the Elizabeth saying that. No, no, they're fickle. They flow with the events and times and you can't trust them. But what you can do is process them inside a relationship with God. God, why am I in despair? Why? What is it about you I don't know? What is it about you that your love that I don't get? Would you show that to me? Are emotions, and apparently the hurting ones, can invite us into some really, really good space? If we don't ignore them, don't need to trust them either, just let them go to Him. And as God works in us, He does wonderful things. Someone also brought up on the podcast, I'll just give me a little more. This is quite a while back, how isolating long-term illness is. It's about 20 years now since I had to give up my work due to chronic fatigue syndrome slash ME. The living is basic. But Jesus and I have come to know each other even better as a result. Consequently, I feel I've gained far more over these years through having this condition than I would have done had I remained healthy. I also have had to deal with chemical sensitivities and numerous food allergies, which greatly impact any ability to socialize or travel. Up until this illness, I had been able to do things that satisfied and aided my sense of worth. Now all of that came to an end. It was again time to redress my perceptions, redress my perceptions of what successful human living was all about. It made me realize that many people are marginalized by religious society because of their circumstances. I had never considered this before. The emphasis while I was attending the institution was to get all the meeting and get to all the meetings and be involved in serving, etc. I had never before considered those that were not able to do this for one reason or another. Did God love them any less? Of course not. But what is the message they are receiving from able-bodied members? It is so liberating to know that no matter what our circumstances, everyone can have a deep and intimate experience with God. Everyone can walk through their day in fellowship with Him. We might not always be able to go out and meet with others or invite others home as often as we would wish, but we can pray. This over the years has given me a sense of purpose in times when I feel very isolated and quite useless. Life definitely has seasons and over the years I've been on this journey there have been times when it's been possible for me to walk beside others, times when I could barely get out of bed and disappointing times when a rare opportunity to meet with others has had to be cancelled at the last moment for health reasons. However, it's through these episodes that I've come to realize just how important an email text or phone call is to those whose circumstances have limited their ability to get out and about. It's just a little thing any one of us can do but means so much to those on the receiving end. Liz, I don't know if you read I don't know how long ago you wrote this or if you're even still listening to the podcast but I want to thank you. I just think this is an incredibly insightful letter about how this journey takes on life out of finding my validation working hard to realizing that it's love and care for people. That's what the system can't do and what God invites us to do. Now, we don't need a program for that. You don't need a meeting for that because it doesn't necessarily happen that way. What you just need is a heart for people and where does that come from? I don't have a heart for people. Wayne, I'm trying to get my own needs met. Well, that comes from him. We're trying to get our own needs met because we don't yet know God's big enough to be in our lives to deal with us how he wants to to invite us into the space he needs to and God's able to do that and give us that kind of connection. Well, this last trip in Texas I got to meet with a woman that I have corresponded with probably over the last 12 years. She went through a horrible tragedy in her life and family and it almost took hers. It just, the despair was so great and just through and I've told her story before in more individual sayings. Not mine to really tell in terms of the details on a public way but I have watched God deal with incredible tragedy in her life. I've shared some of it on this podcast in the past. There was a particular Mother's Day having lost a daughter to suicide and she's on a Mother's Day feeling all the horrors that people feel on Mother's Day and she woke up that morning and had already reached out for prayer for some people on an interlaced list. I was a part of the day before. Pray for me. It's the worst day of that and her birthday and Mother's Day are the worst days for me. And she had this moment where God met her that morning and this was probably, I'm guessing now because I don't have it in front of me. This is maybe five to six years after the suicide and after dealing with the pain in her own life. But God said to her on Mother's Day she was just pleading, God, give me enough to get through this day. Just help me survive this day. And God spoke to her and said, you know what? Today your daughter is celebrating your Motherhood in my presence and I too am celebrating your Motherhood with her and the only one not celebrating is you and we want to invite you to join us. I've known that woman's story for 10, 12 years. I got a chance to sit with her and talk for a while about her journey. You're now battling cancer and going through some other things in her life. And I just asked her, she said, you know what? I love this statement. She said, you know, I know God's still celebrating with her. That's not a once a day thing for God. He does it every day. And I've continued to celebrate with him and now I'm in a different space in my journey and we'll see what's in that too. Man, I tell you what, there are so many people around you worthy of being known. There's so many stories unfolding around you that your love, your help, your connection can make a real difference in someone's life. And I think that's what this life is all about. Living loved is not only, man, I'm loved and I don't have to jump through all that performance crowd I used to. But now living loved, I get to live in life. But now living loved, I get to live in love. And I get to have my eyes and my heart open and when I cross people's paths, I can be so not so focused on me that I can engage them and open a door into their heart and see what friendship, what life, what joy God might give us together. And to me, that's the God journey from trying to earn love, to finding it in him, to sharing it with the lost world and to every day is an opportunity to love whomever. And I don't have to go out and pound on doors or beat the pavement or go, cajole strangers on the street. Just love. Love who's before you. Be gracious in the world. Connect with people deeper than just hi, how you doing and how are the kids? And find out there's people out there and I love how Liz finished it. You don't know what an email, a phone call would do for someone who's feeling pretty lonely today and pretty lost today and pretty isolated in their own step of the journey. Be loved well by God. Oh, absolutely. And then you'll know how to love well in the world. Honestly, I think that's all there is to the kingdom growing among us. 980.