A few encouraging thoughts on our journey from “here to there”

Shortly after I came to faith someone once handed me a Keith Green CD (I was born a few years after he passed). When I listened to it, I discovered a passionate, rugged, twenty-something pop singer/songwriter with a great sense of humor and an healthy allergy for Church-hypocrisy. We played one of his songs (Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful) at our wedding. He is no longer with us, but Keith: thank you brother for keeping it real!

Anyway, Keith wrote a song called “So you want to go back to Egypt?”, singing about Israel’s wrestle with the arid desert. You see, Israel had a goal: to go to the promised land of "milk and honey" and get their hands on those famous Canaanite fig cakes as soon as possible. But on the way there, things got a little rocky. No lakes, no rain, no fresh crops, hostile people. They were puzzled: “what in the world have we gotten ourselves into! Where is Moses' miracle-God now?!” (Numbers 11:1).

Discouragement lurks around the corner when we’re in between two spaces. When God is doing a new thing and is taking us from “here to there”, we’re sometimes armed with nothing but a little faith and a promise from Heaven. Lydia and I find ourselves in this space these days, and so I wanted to write to you today about what we’ve learned so far about journeying with God from “here to there”, a place between the promise and its fulfilment.

1. Seek Community

Surrounding ourselves with Church family, relatives, and the few friends we’ve made here, is making a huge difference. We’ve had several friends and family visiting, are currently part of two church networks, are meeting with local pastors and have started gathering with our new community as much as possible. The first man wasn’t called to live alone (Gen. 2:18), and neither are we called to do life and ministry alone. Find refreshing in the support and encouragement of others.

2. Strengthen yourself in the Lord

Israel turned its eyes from the sustaining presence of Yahweh in their midst, to the things they had known and enjoyed before (who doesn’t remember Egypt’s famous leeks and onions) and to the things they were going to miss out on in their future. Pulled in two directions by visions of lack in past and future, their present became unbearable. They completely lost sight of the promise of a flourishing life in God’s own land (see Num. 11:5). Perspective is everything. Perhaps we could say it wasn’t so much their actual needs, but more their fear of not having their needs met that became the breeding ground for a lot of bad life choices. God always seems to call us back to the present. Why is it Jesus talks about lilies and daisies? Because they point us to the creator who sustains and feeds even the smallest creatures and plants. Would he then not much take care of you and I? Yes, he will!

3. Allow yourself to grieve loss

The beginning of one season means the closing of another. Sometimes, as the seasons change, so do our relationships. In life, sometimes the sense of loss of something comes instantly, like when we lose a person or animal precious or dear to us. Sometimes it is more gradual and subtle. Like when you slowly lose a friendship, or when you have to come to grips with not being able to pursue a dream you held dear. Whether the grief comes instantly or gradually, we need to be comfortable with our feelings of grief and take time to sit with them, to process them, to feel them. For me personally, my homesickness and sense of separation from family and friends in Europe only really hit me once we settled here in the US. I had been so occupied with the practicals of moving, that the feelings only came later. I needed to take time to pray and process these feelings with and before the Lord. A close biblical concept for this is the idea of “lamenting” something. We’re not articulating our grief in an unhealthy echo-chamber that spirals us downward, but in expressing our grief to the Lord we enter a heavenly sphere where there is room to express and weep, but also a hopeful reminder of God’s faithfulness and a new beginning. Gentle trust and gratitude are born out of these times. It’s a healthy way of processing real human sorrow and grief.

4. Let God bring the increase

The Apostle Paul was a Church planter, and part of his strategy seems to have been to sow the seed of the word in as many hearts as he could find (Phil. 1:18). Those hearts that were receptive and open, he gathered and organized into a church community. What a beautiful picture. We cannot spend our life trying to please people who do not love us, nor trying to gain approval from those whom God hasn’t given to us (hard, I know!). Lydia and I have had to come to a place where we had to decide to trust that God would bring those to our Church whom he  sees fit in his time. We also don’t have to worry about everyone, he’s calling us to be faithful to the ones he has given/ is giving to us (John 17:12). Jesus loved farming parables. Well, a farmer can’t speed up his harvest by telling it to “hurry up and grow already!” As pastors we have to patiently water, tend, nourish and then trust the Lord for the increase. The same counts for parents as they nurture their children’s faith.This is how we’re approaching Church planting (and a whole host of other things in life).