I guess it may seem like we need to get reacquainted it being so long since I last posted. This will have normally spelled out the death of a blog so I guess I’ll see if this is really an obituary in the next few days.

The only way I guess I can describe the last little while is brokenness. I really been travelling down a road that has been challenging me to live my faith in a more tangible way. I find God creeping in to my life at times where he never used to, I find my mind being bothered by things it never used to.

Through all this, I found it hard to blog. I could find the words to describe what I was feeling, what I was being challenged with. I knew that it would sound like a rant or a harsh reaction to church, when the real issue was me.

I’ve been operating like I was pretty well centred in Christ when in reality I sometimes don’t want to follow him much at all. How can you be centred in someone you could take or leave?

A couple of moments really stood out to me. I was listening to Francis Chan talk about a moment where he read Ephesians 1:1 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…” (NIV) and got stuck right there. By the will of God. He talked about how he sometimes didn’t really want to know the will of God and how that moment deeply affected him and changed his life. When he talked about that, it hit me like a truck too. I say I want to know the will of God, but do I? Am I really willing to follow His will whatever it is? I had a hard time answering that question.

A second moment was when I read through Jesus questioning Peter if he really loved Him. That question repeated three times seemed to hit me hard. I know it mirrored Peter’s denying of Jesus three times and the love mentioned had some interesting connotations, beyond that though, Jesus just getting to the heart of the matter asking if Peter loved him was enough for me. I heard Jesus asking me; Geoff, do you love me? Geoff, do you love me? Geoff, do you love me? I felt like I assume Peter must have, inside just being shredded apart by the question repeated again and again. Thinking to myself don’t ask me that question again! It’s killing me to  have to answer it, because I keep having to let go of good things that I thought were important in order to say yes! It’s killing me to answer because I know of all the times I have denied your will because I didn’t want to go there! It’s killing me to answer because it’s not about anything else than my relationship with you, I can’t hide behind anything! It’s just plain killing me…

So there lay the shredded remains of me, what was left? I was broken. It was in that though, that Jesus finally had me.

We all must get to the heart of the matter, where Jesus looks at us and asks us: ‘Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?’

The timing of Easter and the scripture I was reading yesterday really helped with the refocusing.  I am reminded that no matter what I face I must press on faithfully, obediently.  There is no reason why I cannot make it through these times without being carried away by the sea of life.  It makes me think of Peter and how when his eyes were on Jesus and not the stormy water he was walking fine but as soon as he lost his focus and looked down his heart sank and then so did his body.  If  I want to make it through all of the craziness, business, curve balls , distractions and whatever else this life is going to dish out I must keep my eyes fixed on the One who gives me the power and authority to walk on top of it all with the right perspective and attitude!   We can do this… we can live a life walking on the stormy water accomplishing the things God has for us despite all that is around us, we simply must keep our eyes on the One who gave it all for us so we can!

It may sound self-indulgent, selfish, arrogant or some other me obsessed adjective, but I really want to be a part of something great for God. I want to see His Kingdom advance in a way that is noticeable, recognised and celebrated as a divine disturbance to the broken trajectory the world is on. So with this in mind I pray and seek God’s will and His plan for me the church I am a part of, my community… I envision all sorts of great things happening and believe that God has great things in store for us. Then the thought crosses my mind, so what would a kingdom that Jesus establishes look like? If he were to play some type of computer kingdom building game – Kingdom Tycoon? Sim’s Kingdom? – what would it look like? More so, would the kingdom I build look anything like His?

So often I look at the kingdoms we build on earth, and I am talking about churches, and I wonder when they moved from the Lord’s prayer “Thy kingdom come” to ‘my kingdom’ come. I often think and feel there is a disconnect between what we end up establishing and what Jesus would establish. That there is a very earthly feel to the kingdoms we tend to build. What is wrong with an earthly feel? Well, maybe the fact that it would seem to fly in the face of  ”Our Father who art in Heaven…. Thy Kingdom come….” I would suggest that the closer we get to the kingdom of heaven, the less it will resemble kingdoms we see all around us on earth. Do our church kingdoms differ that greatly from the enterprises outside the church? Don’t we often model, frame, emulate the structures of empires and kingdoms from the business, political, and arts cultures around us?

I think I need to do some more work thinking about what Jesus’ kingdom would look like today…

How about you, what do you think the kingdom should look like, what do you see Jesus establishing as His kingdom? Is that what you are trying to do? How is it subversive and different from the kingdoms all around us?

As I was sitting there tonight trying very hard to think about things in a balanced way all I could think about was how there was so much housework still not done and how I could have handled situations with my kids better and how I could have spent my time with my kids differently and where am I going to find the energy to do all the things that I need to do and what about God, I haven’t been doing so well in the whole spending time with Him department lately and… well I think that you get the idea now.  As I was thinking all these thoughts trying to get a grip on what thoughts are needed and what were garbage I was so wonderfully reminded how I am not and never will be enough!!  I am not meant to be enough, that is God’s job and His job alone.  His grace and perfection are enough… I am not God and need to stop trying to be.  I need to embrace my insufficiency and His beautiful magnificent sufficiency!!  How liberating a thought, to allow myself the freedom to fully accept His grace and sufficiency, why do we find our own desire to be god so hard to give up when we have this amazing and incredible free gift offered to us.  Why do we find it so hard to accept our own inadequacy when God offers us His perfection for free all we have to do is follow Him.  We don’t even have to figure out the paths to take He shows us the way to go!!  The flesh is such a strange and deceptive thing let us put it off and run this race we are in free from false perceptions of who and what we are supposed to be!!  I want it!!!!  I want to live in that freedom!!

It struck me as so sad that someone venerated because of their efforts to share the gospel of Jesus with a nation has been reduced to a poor excuse to drink green beer all day long. It brought it just a little bit clearer how far beyond being a ‘post Christian’ nation we are becoming. We are entering into territory that we haven’t really seen in the country before, a pre-Christian era.

This is where I think it changes for me though, because now I get excited. Here are all these people celebrating a Saint they know little to nothing about, who is popular because he brought the gospel to a nation that didn’t know about Jesus! The irony to me is great.

So in honour of Maewn Succat, or St. Patrick as you may know him, I am excited for what is in store her in Canada. The gospel is a message that needs to be told and needs to be heard. Who knows what the result will be? Maybe another Maewyn is out there, about to burst onto the scene here in Canada and change the spiritual landscape. Maybe there needs to be a little more St Patrick in all of us…

Today I read though the account of how the Israelis pushed their luck with God so much and so often that it ended in them having to wander the desert for another forty years before they were given the chance to enter into the promised land. From Moses’ brother and sister, to key leaders in the nation to the entire population, they consistently challenged Moses and God in their authority, plan and ability to care for them despite the supernatural happening in their midst on a constant basis.

When I read of how Moses and God would keep giving the other responsibility for the nation it struck be as both funny and tragic that at moments both were ready to disown or wipe them all out. I thought that both of them, when faced with the latest challenge or complaint de jour would respond either out loud or at least think: “Are you kidding me?”

Are you kidding me? That is a question full of incredulity, a ‘you can’t be serious’ response to astonishingly brazen and ignorant challenges. When you are watching a cheap horror movie and like in every movie of the genre, the characters blindly walk into rooms to meet their demise, you want to yell at the screen ‘are you kidding me? why would you wander around a house you know their is a killer in? I am reading through the passage saying the same thing; are you kidding me? Why are you challenging Moses and God both whom have proven themselves repeatedly?

But then the other shoe dropped. God seemed to be saying to me in that moment – are you kidding me? why do you not trust me when I have proven myself to you over and over again?

Darn.

Should have seen that coming. Why do I challenge God so often? Why don’t I rely on his judgement and direction more readily? How come I can obstinately stand there in front of the God who created everything and push back?

What are you going to do with that He says to me…

Well I certainly don’t want to wander in the desert for 40 years so…. I think I’ll go with your plan!

How bout you? Ever feel like God is shaking his head at you saying are you kidding me?

I see in my mind where I would like things in my life to go. Don’t we all? We all are looking for something to happen, for some plan to unfold as we walk through life. We have goals, targets, ideals that we’d like to reach. There are things that inspire us to dig deeper, push harder, persevere through the tough times because the rewards are worth it.

What do we do when those dreams though are things we may never see happen? Reading through Hebrews 11, I was caught when I read it in the Message. It talked about how all these people listed in the chapter had lives of faith that were exemplary yet they didn’t see the dream come to reality.  Dreams of becoming a nation, of seeing salvation come.

I started thinking about my dreams, what if I never see them come to pass? What if the dream I see will come about but not while I’m around? What if I am just laying the ground work for what will happen? Am I okay seeing the dream ahead but not being able to taste the rewards of what it takes to get there?

Its one thing to talk about spiritual disciplines and personal character as an end result in themselves, but we are wired with inspiration, vision, hope, looking to the future. If you take that future away, what do you have left? That is what makes the lives of those in Hebrews 11 that much more amazing! That they were able to hold on to dreams they would never see fulfilled in their lives, be faithful to what they needed to do and not give up.

What would it do to you to know you would never see your dreams happen, oh they would happen, just not when you are around? Would you be able to keep the same passion for your dream? If you have a passion for your music to impact people’s lives but it doesn’t happen until someone else sings your songs, would you still write them? if you have a dream to see your community transformed and it happens after you move out would you still live generously, knowing you would see no reward?

What if I put it this way: would you work all day if at the end they paid someone else?

Our vantage point for the plans and purposes for our lives is so limited. We can’t see all the valleys in the road, or where our journey ends on that road. We are just moving towards what God has in store for us. We can’t see how it all ends and sometimes we’ll make our own endings, our own finish lines that aren’t real. We’ll look for rewards that aren’t ours, we’ll look for praise that is temporary instead of rewards that last.

To be honest, I really want to see my dreams come about, but more and more I am becoming comfortable that the hope I have and the future that I can’t see is far greater than what I can see.  This makes it easier to keep pursuing what dreams may (or may not) come…

How about you? How closely are you tied to the rewards of your dreams? Can you still passionately work for dreams that are bigger than you?

Now you may be thinking, 100o hits isn’t very many…

When we started this experiment, we had no expectations, no great reason to believe anyone would read what we are writing. We just felt it was something we were to do. Since we started this, it has been an amazing journey to hear in the comments and personally from people the impact that our thoughts, words and openness has had on them. We are rewarded everytime someone is impacted.

So we want to reward you for following the experiment.

If you have been impacted by this blog in some way, just send us an e-mail (alivingexperiment@gmail.com) telling us how you’ve been impacted. We will randomly select two people and send you a special gift, a bracelet from Nightlight!

NightLight is an international organization committed to addressing the complex issues surrounding trafficking and prostitution by catalyzing individual and community transformation. NightLight’s vision is to offer intervention to sexually exploited women and children, to enable them to discover their dignity, and to provide a program of holistic transformation, empowering them to live and work in their community.

NightLight’s mission is to build relationships and provide hope, intervention, rescue and assistance to women and children exploited in the sex industry by offering alternative employment, vocational opportunities, life-skills training and physical, emotional and spiritual development to women seeking freedom. NightLight builds support networks internationally to intervene and assist women, men and children whose lives are negatively impacted by the sex industry.

These pictures are the bracelets that you’ll have a chance to win. They are a awesome (I wear one), durable, and a great conversation piece.

Thanks so much for doing this experiment with us! We look forward to what is in store as the experiment continues to unfold!

Geoff & Ingrid