Friends, and Friends of Friends — http://www.thegodjourney.com/audio/2007/0720h.mp3

It's now time to think outside the box of what we've always known. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the sovereign Lord. I think that's a profound turning point in somebody's relationship with God. And our hope in starting this was that this would become an ever-expanding conversation. Just two real guys talking about life. That's a nice tagline. I'm Wayne Jacobson. And I'm Brad Cummings. And welcome to another edition of The God Journey. Bradley. Chipper Update. Oh, hey. He's back? No. No. No. But guess what? My kids have had a whole series of multiple dreams of that cat coming back. And I mean, at a point in time when Kelly has already been going to the animal rescue shelter ready to get a new replacement. A dog? Tell me it's a dog. Not another cat. Taylor is voting for kitties. She'd like plural. Okay. Jonathan's kind of like, I think I'd like a dog. There you go. I threw in my hat for a dog. There you go. Kelly's going, yeah, but cats are a little less maintenance. They kind of take care of themselves. And they're kind of cody. Jared's kind of sitting on the fence because he's aware of all his options. And so he just kind of, no, no. How about a baboon? I don't think so. But I will share the suggestion with the Cummings family. But you know what's so interesting is this is leading into a wonderful set of dialogues of how do we really hear God's voice? How do we discern what it is we're hearing? Because, you know, Jonathan was so sure that Chipper was coming back that he called Grandma. And he said, Grandma, you got to go buy our house. I think Chipper might be sitting out back. And where were you all? You weren't your house? I was in Nashville. Okay. And then he was up at Shaver Lake. Hey, they won the fourth of July, I think, for the third year in the row. Yeah, the Cummings are too competitive. No, no, no. I don't think they went up there to try to even do it. But somehow they put on- They're the only people at Shaver Lake that take this thing seriously. No, we're not. No, no, the lake is full. There's competition. But the truth is, we've won three years in a row. And it's like- What'd you do this year? It wasn't great. It wasn't George and Laura. I wasn't there. I have no idea. You know what they did? You didn't find out. I didn't get all the details. All right. Yeah, but you didn't talk to your family? But we haven't debriefed all the details. You got home yesterday, as a matter of fact. Yeah. I haven't debriefed all the details. Okay, well, there you go. So in all of that- Well, Sarah and I were going to copy it for next year so we could- I know. Well, we'll send you this stuff. Okay, great. But in all of that, it's been fun to just sort of talk through the suggestions of, well, okay, you get some of this right, some of this wrong. And it's just- It's been neat. My kids right now, for whatever reason, are all really spiritually hungry. They're asking a lot of questions and out of the midst of painful stuff, it's just neat to kind of turn it towards the Lord and watch what unfolds. So I don't know. I'm half of the mind that- You're half of the mind? I'm half. Yeah, I've been half. I've been out of my mind, but now I'm half of the mind. It's showing progress. That this cat just might show up. And so who knows? Or if a dog shows up named Chipper, take it. Because I might drop one off on the doorstep with a Chipper dad. I've reincarnated into a canine. Take me in. He is known as the cat dog. And my kids are saying, well, you got to write a book, Dad, on the cat dog. And because we have just so many funny stories. I had a guy in Ireland just- He listens to the podcast too. And he kept telling me. He's from Northern Ireland. He came down and visited us. He said, I'm going to tell you, I've got a cat wing you would love. This cat's just like a dog. And I'm saying, it's just like a dog. Get a dog. Why do you want a cat? No, Wayne, this is part of a knowledge you only get through experience. And you have not experienced a cat that's like a dog. And if you had, you'd understand what that man from Ireland was saying. I guess I would. I'm just my- You probably never will. The fact that I'm allergic to cats goes a long way to- But if I get to Northern Ireland, I'll give it a shot. Have a look. Yeah. Say, hey, I'm sure everyone has been itching to hear and wanting to know about Ireland. And so let's move the Blarney stone over and set it down. How's the Blarney stone? The Blarney stone is not one thing they let me kiss when I'm in Ireland. No? No, they say there's a few of us that got the gift of gab. That's what you get when you kiss the Blarney stones. They're like, no, no, no, no. You made out for a long time years ago, huh? With the stone? I don't think so. Well you do have the gift of gab and you have it in droves. Unfortunately we do. Let me set up for what Ireland was about because I know folks who really wanted to hear about it. And I'm dying to share. And I've got some help today because toward the end of it, I just talked to quite a few people and recorded some of their comments and observations about the week. But I'll just set it up and we'll let them kind of speak for it. And then you and I'll come out and talk about some of the things- Let me ask a question. Sure. For those who don't know anything. Yep. You went to Ireland, why? Well, I was invited to come. Actually, a good friend of mine from Australia, he and his wife, Kevin and Val Smith, who've been on the podcast with us before, were going to be there for a couple of weeks. And the folks from Ireland just said, hey, you know, some other folks are going to be here from South Africa at the same time and maybe you'd want to be here too. And I said, I don't think so. I've got a lot to do. I was going to be elsewhere in Europe. I'd just been to Ireland. And they were a little persistent. They came back and just said, you know what? That seems to be putting something together. It's like a little global powwow of a whole bunch of people that know each other. Some did, some didn't. But it kind of took on a life of its own from just a few of us are going to be there and some folks are going to overlap to maybe God has some other folks to come. So people invited folks to be there. And so this community, which we've had their story on before about a year ago, laying it down in Dublin, we'll kind of give you the background on this group of folks who don't meet together with any regularity. They've known each other for 30 years. They've shared the life of Jesus together in and out of their homes. And their thought was, let's just have a festival where we all kind of get together for a week without any agenda, without any speaking, planned meetings. Let's just come together and see what God does for us. Now that's unique. Very unique. That's unique. We'll be in and out of each other's homes of picnics and barbecues. And so, again, no one counted these things. So I'm going to give rough figures so people know that probably 60 folks or so from Dublin hosted about 40 of us who came in from all over the planet. I think 10, 11 different countries. Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Australia, and from the States. And I invited some folks, I just got to put on my heart and say, hey, you might be interested in coming and seeing what this is about. But the ones I invited, I said, you know what? I can't promise you anything. It's been total bust for all I know. We're just coming together. We're going to spend a week having picnics and barbecues and seeing what God does relationally. And so we showed up and pretty much that's what we did. We had somebody got a little bit of acreage in a nice big green grassy field and they bought a couple weeks before one of these big wedding marquees, these kind of like big tents that you can put 100 people under. And they bought that thing because the weather's not always good in Ireland. No, I've experienced the same thing. It's the Emerald Isle for a reason. Yeah, it's well watered. It's well watered. It's well watered. And this was supposed to be the hottest summer on record for them, and it rained every day and some days lots of rain while we were there. We played golf in the rain. We toured in the rain. We met in the rain. We got together at First Avenue. It's just a big picnic. A hundred folks came and... And you met your long lost aunt over there. I met my long lost aunt. Well, someone, one of your wonderful dear friends, sent me a photo, Wayne. No, no, no, no. Yes, Wayne. No, no, not your long story. It's either your long lost aunt. Yeah, let's say it is aunt. A cross-dresser. We say aunt here in the states. Or you're a cross-dresser. No, not a cross-dresser. This is a lady in purple. Purple hair. It's not a lady, first of all. And there were a lot of people wearing purple hair. I only have the picture of you. I have pictures of life. I laughed for a good almost five minutes enjoying this and the email that came along with it. That was day two. I haven't got to day two yet. Oh, okay. Well, I was just... I don't know. I couldn't resist. And I did promise the email sender that we would put it on the website. I'm so glad I have... I'm not putting it on the website, first of all. And you don't know how. You have to. You have to. Or those that know how. I have a password. If I'm instructed, I can do this. No. You don't want to do this. Enough of me on the website already. No, no, no. Strange things. Not this side of you. I'll put the lead chart on again. No, no, no. Not this side. Actually, it started kind of funny, because I was in England getting emails. Everybody that was coming was on an internet list together. And they started talking about having a women's tea and then a youth meeting. And I'm just like, okay, now I'm seeing... We don't have any plan to... We're going to break up in these ways that... We always break up in. So you were a bust in stereotypes, were you? Well, I just put a thing on. I said, well, obviously I can't go to the women's thing, but how young do you have to be to go to the youth thing? And some of the snarky little girls from... A little girl, she's in her 20s, but one of my dear friends from Ireland wrote back and said, well, if you have a wig and makeup, or a wig and lipstick, you can go to women's tea. And as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome at the youth thing. So I got to my room and laying on the bed was a purple wig. And full regalia. No, just a purple wig. All right. And I put my suitcase down, went and talked while I came back in. And there's a tube of lipstick sitting there. So I'm thinking, okay, this is growing. And this could get really bad, but it didn't grow from there, thankfully. So you have a couple of pints of Guinness. Is this what happened? Yeah, not a Guinness guy. Some of the other folks did, but not me. So the next day we had a big bus tour. First day was just a picnic. I'm telling you the conversations that went on in that place, not only from the folks around there who don't see each other all the time, who loved connecting again, and then meeting all these other people who had come in from South Africa and Australia and all these other places. Some of them had previously met. A lot of them had not. And you know how you're often in big groups of people and you kind of in one conversation and that kind of ends and you turn around and then you're kind of left out of every conversation. You sit there feeling like a wallflower kind of awkward. This never happened that I know of. You turn around for one conversation and immediately sucked into another one. And just the depth of sharing of each other's lives. That was Sunday in a field. Monday we went on a bus tour. One of the men there is a tour guide and he's a funny man we like playing with. So I thought I'd get on the bus and throw the purple wig on because that'd be hilarious and it actually worked out pretty well because it ended up everybody ended up wearing the wig at one point or another and we just had a great time and it really opened doors with kids and youth there and we just had ourselves a great time. You work on a cute. We spent all day touring and having conversations in the bus on hikes going through fabulous and that just kicked off the week. The rest of the week there was not any other all group meetings. There was, you know, 10, 12 people being this home for dinner, five, six over here for lunch. People, the house I was staying in, people kept coming by. We were a bit out of town from Dublin and some of the Dublin folks, the kids would come down during the day and we'd just sit down and talk as folks living next door and it's a wonderful thing that's happened in the south of Dublin areas in County Wicklow. Oh, seven or eight families have, as they're retiring, kind of migrating down that direction and buying homes near each other. It's kind of the opposite of what some say. You know, if you're going to form a house church, you've got to all buy homes on the same street and then you end up hating each other and now you've got homes next to each other. These people became friends first and then found ways to live near each other and so the home next door was folks that were part of this whole thing as well and they had this little, your kids need to see this little nine week old lab puppy. So I was over there every day just being friends with the puppy and almost wanted to take her home. She was really wonderful but out of broken little boy's heart so I decided to not take his puppy home. That's smart. But the whole week long, just all kinds of fellowship and there was no angst for everybody's got to be together and who's here with this person? I got to go over there and meet that person. It just flowed wonderfully and then we finished on the next Saturday with a big barbecue. Three barbecues cooking food and man, they were hamburgers and chicken and sausage and people brought side dishes and again we spent a whole bunch of hours just sitting around talking. And did it remain agenda free? It really did. See that's probably heaven on earth right there. I'm telling you, there wasn't even the last Sunday. No one even said, hey, let's have a meeting of some kind. Did they try to name it? No, nobody named it anything. And what's interesting now is it's all gone. There's nothing there to like, oh, I go to Dublin and see this. Well, you can't. It's people. It's gone. And the people have all scattered and the field is a field again. And we just had a great time and what's enduring is the relationship. Now I want you to hear from other folks. I want you to hear what it is that God touched another people. And then I think we can talk on the backside of some of this. There's probably 10 people here. I'm not going to try and identify all of them. Some of them you've heard before on various podcasts or people I've interviewed in the past. But by their accents and by their genders, you're going to hear a pretty good smattering of folks and what they have to say about our time in Ireland. Oh, great. We really appreciate the way it was all set up and meeting up there in that big marquee the other day. And 100 people who most really didn't know each other, did they? And there was just an atmosphere, wasn't there? There was just something united. I looked around and I thought each of these people have such a unique and special story to share of what Father has been doing in their lives. And I wanted to hear every single one. And I knew that I couldn't. But we got more in than you'd ever gotten into the conference, didn't we? Yes, you're right. Because instead of listening to one person talk, people have been sharing not only that day, which most of us were strangers that day. And I went to me, I think all but about 12 people in that tent. But for a lot of other people, it was just the beginning of a week of relationships. But I think by the end of the week the number of stories that we do have and the feelings for specific people, it's been a wonderful group meeting. Yeah, it's been the relationships that have been developed and the connections that have been made. I've seen open homes before. I've seen houses where you were welcomed. I had never seen open hearts like this. I had never been with this many people who represented a life in Christ and a life of Christ in them like I've seen here. Never in my entire life. Really? So that's quite a statement because I've been around a few years. And seriously, it's been a tremendous thing. We look around and it seems like every turn we find another couple we haven't met and yet we see a common heart. And yet the magnificent thing is it's without form, it's without protocol. We've been the same. I could not even visualize in my wildest imagination how this is going to work out not having been at any place like this before when there's a gathering from all over. How can it work out without any organization? And I have found that the times when there were bigger or larger groups together were real blessings. There was a real flow of the Spirit and quite often we were quiet and just waiting on the Lord. Quite often spontaneous prayer happened and some worship when these groups were together. The twos and threes that gathered together were a blessing. There was a real inspiration to obviously hear what Father's saying and that's something we talk a lot about. But I really got the impression that there's things on his heart of the way that he wants to touch others and creative ways that sometimes we're not aware of because of our own box, the own framework that we have, our idea of reaching out or touching others. How do we produce in this family? And you usually come up with some kind of strategy. And I just hear him saying, no, no strategy. There's some things in front of your face that if you just be quiet and listen to me a little bit while you're resting, you're renewing your strength for a purpose. And sometimes we just feel that, well, I've come out of the system, I've worked hard, I'm just going to rest, I'm going to sit around tables, eat with people, have wonderful fellowship in your daddy's love and just leave it at that. Well, I think it's been a little picture of the delight of being brothers and sisters together in God's family without anything holding us together apart from Him. Father is at work in His people and doing things that are similar but not the same, moving people forward without being a movement, adventuring in the life of God, letting God's life flow almost in spite of us. And that's thrilling because you say, I've always believed these things are happening. I've seen it confirmed now from how many nations, eight, nine nations together. That's significant. Several people have used the word that you've used and that is the word reality and the word the sense of freedom and lack of pretense. And I think every one of those words have a fitting for us that has real significance, a lack of pretense, a fact you can be yourself and be truly genuine and you sense it with reciprocity. You hear it coming back. It's a work of God. It's a work of the Spirit. For us it's been just pure delight. We have been thrilled to have so many people. We've been thrilled as well to just see the way in which folks have flowed together and there's been no contrived agenda but the Lord has had his agendas, maybe hundreds of them and we don't know the beginning or end of what's gone on in people's lives. For me personally, before it all came I felt I heard the Lord say that there would be a knowing and understanding of him that would take place that was beyond our mind or our comprehension just by thinking about it. I think that that has happened. There's been an experience of the presence of the Lord that can only happen I think in the context of folks being together, be it in small groups or in larger groups or whatever but sharing life and there's something very precious about that. When Paul talks in Ephesians about that you may together with all the saints understand I wonder, two ways of maybe interpreting that about it being that you might all together understand or that because you are together there is the understanding. And the life of Christ that was being shared in those small conversations I mean there's been a lot of sharing of who people are and where they've come from but there's also been the deeper sharing of what God is doing now in people's lives and that for me is what's vital and to give that from what God is saying and doing through you too. Any of your kids, they felt comfortable they did, they've really enjoyed it which is very special to us as a parent in fact, Cathy's comment when we first got back after that first Sunday she said, are all these people outside of the church system she said, I didn't think there were that many people in the whole world that were out. So your son came over from the states and met you here. What has this weekend other than you haven't seen him in three years so I understand that was incredibly fabulous just connecting with your son but what does it mean for you to connect with this wider expression of the body of Christ? I think my son in the last couple of months, the last six months or so did go through the same settling that we went through and he had total peace with the direction that he and his wife took also in moving out of the institutional church and also for him I have been really praying a lot for him for a long time and I suddenly started to see the fruit of my prayers in his turning to a very closer, much closer relationship to the person of Jesus and for me that is exactly what happened to me the last two years and so when we got together we sensed the presence of Jesus between us which was totally something totally different than we've ever had before for us that the three days that he was here with us was a real blessing and he himself was very sure that the Lord sent him and it was partly for what happened between us but also he asked the Lord why did I come and our hosts really beautiful people opened their home for us and we saw in them an amazing spirit of generosity and servanthood and especially in the lady Olive who was just going along and working and helping other people and my son said to me as I was running and I asked Jesus why was I here he said to me you came to see Olive and we are looking for the big things in a weekend like this and so he came to see her lifestyle and her life of servanthood made a deep impression on both of us especially on him I do see that God would have a strategy of joining hearts not just at a local level but bigger than that and that he would that can be strategic in his plan and his purpose that there is that Holy Spirit heart joining that takes place and that he can play on those heart strings when he needs to enjoy and bring one another in different places to mind and have us stand and support with one another I think that's very valuable I've seen that in the past and I think we're going to grow more and more I was fascinated with the host coming to me, some of the hosts and each one would say I don't know about everybody else but we got the best we got the cream well it's always tiring when you do something like that but it's just been so worth it you can't describe it but it's just wonderful to experience and I found the week just so strengthening and things that I thought I thought I know I really think that now it's just been yeah a really encouraging week isn't it true that the the thing we've seen here is just that it's not a matter of how we make things happen it's a matter of how God is making things happen and we've taken stop long enough and try endeavor to remove our part from it so that we can actually see something of Father's workiness more clearly we see it from time to time but here it's been very evident it's been very evident in the fact that there are people who didn't know each other and once you know someone in the family you can never unknow them so what's happened here has an impact that will be felt right through to eternity we've been talking today about our effect on the people around and just really encouraged that we don't need special programs or evangelistic campaigns but just to love and to enjoy the life that we have and let people see it and let them be drawn in and that's really I suppose the desire of the hearts now that we're tired of talking about being outside the box or the people who don't go to church or something that's not really it it's we all have a longing to see to be the kind of people that people look at and say they know God last night in the course of the night the Lord just spoke in my heart He said you are amongst giants and I went that is amazing you know these people are giants in the area of relationship that's been my impression they are so generous and hospitable and loving each other and I said to them this morning if this is the fruit of what we decided to do six years ago 20 years down the line I'm all for it I'll walk this walk it's great you know that's rich there's a lot of stuff I mean mind blowing in wonderful stuff in that there'd be so much to unpack there I took snippets of things that could be entire discussions I'll forever the value of a group of people we didn't have one teaching session there's one time a man facilitated a bit of dialogue because there's something he had on his heart that we wanted to share together he didn't ask to do it others asked him to it was one song we sang together as a whole group of people that's it everything else happened because we were just together listening to God deep prayer deep sharing deep teaching dialogue times that went on people would kind of join in and others would fade away into other conversations I don't know that I have language for what the system has typically done to warp our way of thinking but what you guys experienced together in my mind the whole time I'm listening I think the Lord was kind of saying this is meant to be normal this is not some extraordinary or just some special weekend but this is what life in his kingdom is meant to be like if we would allow his leading and administration to happen some of the statements of just didn't have any idea how it could work out without some organization well you're not without the organizer if we're all just listening to what the Holy Spirit is asking of us or inviting of us I think sadly and while purpose can be wonderful if you're always asking like well what's the purpose of this you may miss out on the joy of just sharing life that isn't subjugated to oh what's the purpose it's like well there's a multitude of purposes but you're more important than just the purpose yeah and there was some organization behind who's going to be in which home the fact that somebody nobody was asked to do anything freely choose to do the barbecue one couple said we'll provide a barbecue we'll provide the meat we'll do all the cooking for a hundred people they volunteered it that's a big task and they embraced it in the middle of the rain they hoped to have it at their house they couldn't in the end because we had to go back to where we had a little bit of coverage from the rain but they brought all their barbecues over they cooked there what I came away with I think you hear it here the amount of discoveries people had about themselves in God things God showed them just being in this environment was incredible the relationships that God built was incredible and I think they'll be lifelong friendships come from this event when Kevin said once you get to know someone in God you can never unknow them that was I just said they're like oh that's so amazing and so true but how many times do you go to a meeting of Christians and never really have a heart connection with anybody because you've just been a spectator that's what we were talking about earlier about what the system robs from us the fact that we were here together for a week and we didn't have to sit through a lecture so we didn't have to cram fellowship in around the stuff fellowship was the stuff and so whether it was in a home or sitting around a table there'd be a hundred of us in the same room but there's 50 conversations going on and people are opening up their lives and they're revealing things about themselves and asking questions and learning things and then they're sharing from their life and there's just wonderful mix of just conversation and when you're in it it's like the most natural thing in the world wow this is really holy spooky this was just people people relating and I think it's redefined I mentioned this on my blog a little bit he was like boy parse that out some more for us I think I've redefined what is the body of Christ we've talked about being a building being a gathering as I came away from this week I could say you know what the body of Christ is it's friends and friends of friends it's when I'm your friend and when you introduce me to your friend I introduce you to my friend the body of Christ just grows in that network of knowing a lot of these people in Ireland I had introduced to other people and some of the relationships I have are because people in there introduced me to folks in South Africa they found out I was going to say okay I'm going to stay in the country a little bit longer I'm going to go visit some of these people and what you see in Ireland is not only at one point it is the fruit of all that it is the fruit of these people around Dublin have been sharing a relationship for 30 years so I like what Stefan said at the end he's from South Africa and he said if what we started six years ago produces this 20 years from now I hope you'll hear the sense of process in that this is not something just I've got to go find one of these and create one of these there's no desire to even replicate Ireland this God asked a group of us to be together for a week we all learned something we all grew in something what else God might ask us to do we wouldn't try to duplicate that event it was a thing exciting about when I went to Nashville I was jealous of what you guys were experiencing in Ireland I was like wow I was really cool but God just told me to go to Nashville and I had some of the best heart connections that were just friends of friends so if you're sitting here listening oh well gee I wish someone would invite me you know what around the next bend the next little act of obedience to the nudging of God if you're just open to letting the Lord kind of orchestrate this I was in Nashville at a time when there was a big machine making a big thing happen chewing up and tiring everybody out was able to just sort of navigate out and experience some of what you guys were describing without having to just be eaten up by a machine it is an approach to life is what I think I was hearing out of the multitude of what people were saying it wasn't in it it wasn't we're doing the Ireland thing you know what it was in the relationships it was being natural and they were natural and they were fun there wasn't anything about this that was tough we were together long enough to rub against a few things I don't like that so much but it wasn't a big deal and I think one of the things we've learned from the folks in Ireland the fact that they've been 30 years related to each other says a whole lot about the fact that they didn't have an organization to carry together because if they would have had an organization to carry together they wouldn't still be in fellowship all of them with each other that's what our track record is like when I look back and say gosh there are people I was with at the funeral last week saying I could still journey with them if we hadn't had this machine among us and the fight for who could control it who was willing to fight to control it we'd probably still be great friends today that actually the power of the institution got between us there was something to fight over there was something to own, something to have this didn't have that there was nothing to own, there was nothing to have it was just brothers and sisters and the strength of it for all of us would be what we were willing to put into it in terms of making our lives available for relationship and I think sometimes that's what people miss we look for relationship to come to us there are people who when they were invited to come felt led to go someone put some significant money into plane tickets to go that's all part of making an investment in relationship I'm not going for a teaching seminar I'm not going so I get something out of it I'm just going and I have found what happened on us both the expression of something that's been building for 30 years and for other people it's also the starting point it's for them and I think all of us would say at the end of the day what was most powerful about this time for all of us wasn't any large group experience even in the large group experiences it was the twos and threes of conversation it was the fives and sixes sitting down and talking and sharing your heart playing around the golf together going on a tour together tossing a purple wig around together it was just the joy of being together being exactly who we are a little bit nutty, a little bit free and out of that God made himself known I don't think anybody came away unchanged even the group in Dublin said we came away with the sense that God wants to give us a way to our community in a way we haven't experienced yet and we know we don't have to organize anything to make it happen we're just going to love the way we've been loved and watch God make himself known to us that was just beautiful you look at the whole dynamic of just allowing it didn't happen spontaneously the idea popped into somebody's head and they were faithful to share it and the invitation was out there, you have to you get to what you want to and if people are responding to that when you look at the life that comes by just sort of responding was there any organization that had sure there was some tasks that people had to prepare for so it's not like those things are foreign but nobody, it sounds like you experienced the joy of nobody had to create something to hold on to it was lives to enjoy share and come away the richer for it and here's the facilitating it's not leading worship or taking a discussion group, facilitating meant I'm going to introduce you to this person over here I'm going to introduce that person over this person over here, I want you guys to know each other and the facilitating was just introducing friends and friends of friends and I could see this weekend how that can take over the whole world in terms of making the body of Christ known in the world, it doesn't have to be something you can put in the New York Times or Time Magazine if we relate to each other as friends and share our friends with each other and continue to grow in those relationships, there's nothing God can't do in the world through that expression of the life of the church, there's actually nothing you can't do but it does take, yeah and I like what you said about this, it's not a special event nobody else gets to see this we got to see a wider expression of family we did because of the number of nations it brought together and just the number of interconnected relationships pretty broad, but next week I'm going to Canada and there's some people God's bringing together there some people have already met, they're used to church together a long time back in a congregational environment, God split up 10 years ago, they've just met each other again in the fact of my coming and all excited about other people strangers God's bringing, some people coming in from a bit of an area away we'll have the same kind of thing there we'll not have just the whole sitting around the fields and yakking although that'd probably be the most fruitful thing we can do they want me to do some yakking which is always scary when you read through the gospels there's a couple of sermons in there there's a couple of times when Jesus is talking to a gathering of people but the bulk of what's in there seemed to be the conversations that we're life giving and life producing that we can even now listen in on and share in and he's going like you think of what changes the most I know that the people that I've been loved by that have just shared who and what they know of God I remember almost all of that I couldn't tell you what necessarily a sermon might have been but I do know how someone is imprinted their understanding of who God is on my heart and when you can just sort of be open to sharing that in the most natural of moments that I think advances the kingdom without all the trappings that tend to divide us and get in the way absolutely and unmasks the idea that we've got to have something more compatible between us because I said I was Stan Firth that we had on last week on the podcast two weeks ago now I guess we had dinner with him one night and just to sit with a 70 year old man and listen to the things God's revealing in his life then the last night, second to last night I was there two teenage, late teenage kids 19, 20ish from different families, from different countries wanted to have some time to discuss something going on in their life with me and they made a way to do it and had a chance to talk and pray and I think some power I mean they came back the next day and said it really helped me over something and just young people, I mean just the whole idea of age and gender and all the things that divide us were just unimportant, we were just God's kids brothers and sisters together and it was deeply, deeply meaningful but like you said it's not any different than we get to live our lives every day it may only be in the twos and threes right now maybe someday you get in a wider thing where people from an area or a man just a blessing if God makes a way for you to connect with folks from other countries but how many do it, don't just sit back and say oh I wish I could when God gives you an opportunity somebody took the initiative to invite others into this have you considered kind of gathering and you were able to do it with the joy of remaining agenda free and when you just, I mean the snippets of what all those people shared those were outrageous they're wonderful going like wow how refreshing how encouraging how nice it is to know that you're not alone to being being built up by the body just because you're experiencing for a moment shared life and there was no sense for anybody going away saying let's do this again next year is that just turning into something silly or let's go do this in every country next year it was just this is something on six continents simultaneously the focus was God had done this if God has things to do up the road we'll be part of those too when he makes them known one of the dangers we've talked about there is that we always seem to, if God does something good we try to make him do it every week or every year and that always turns into the boring routine of obligation instead of oh God did a wonderful thing all of us that were there were deeply touched God's going to do a wonderful thing in our lives today tomorrow and down the road something like that is on his heart again and it probably wouldn't be like that at all but there'll be something else and when people hear it and open the door and invite some folks to come along it's amazing what he'll do I'm reminded of the moment where Jesus is on the mount of transfiguration he's got three buddies with him and all of a sudden Moses and Elijah appear and Peter blurts out oh I know what we gotta do we gotta make three booths let's build a building I don't know what it is in our religious flesh that sort of feels like when God does something and we're there to experience it we somehow have to memorialize this into an it or something but what's wonderful is God just kind of says alright I heard what you just did obscures it all and what's he say out of that moment this is my son just listen to him and when you think the simplicity what we're being invited to I don't have to be the shepherd I just gotta be a sheep that knows his voice that he says I will follow I'm not gonna follow the voice of a stranger and it's like if we'll let him lead and we'll respond to those nudging I sort of feel like that's the encouragement is look what can happen if you'll just respond to the nudging and what great thing unfolds partly it's I think we grasp at a tradition because we live like that reality is so rare we gotta grab it wherever it happens instead of live in the reality of God's presence and the relationships he gives us every day is not rare it's meant to be the way we live and we get that change of thinking in our hearts there's no end there's no telling what God will do through his family Yeehaw The God Journey If you'd like to join the conversation we'd appreciate your comments or your questions by email or at 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