You're invited! To a Conversation and a Dance.

Where: Grace Life Church Woodstock
Directions: Grace Life Church Woodstock 
655 Molly Ln, Woodstock, GA 30189-6503
When: Thursday, Feb 21st 7:00-9:30pm
Cost: Free!

Come join us for a conversation about what it feels like to trust God and step out as you're led by the Spirit. Dawn and I (Charles) are going to tell a story about leading and following in ballroom dancing that will present a picture of what it feels like to trust Jesus as we walk through this life. Maybe dancing is not your thing. Well, that doesn't really matter. This is a conversation about LIFE.

Zephaniah 3:17 says that God himself sings and even dances over us with joy. Dancing is one of the ways that he expresses his delight in us. Since before time began the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been involved together in a dance of love.

Now each of us has been invited into that dance with Him. In our day-to-day lives—whether we are working, playing with our children or grandchildren, loving our spouses, eating, sleeping, exercising— we're all involved in this dance with the Spirit who teaches us moment by moment to trust Him as our life as we move into our lives.

Getting up and doing anything, especially stepping out onto the dance floor, takes some courage, because it is a risk. Often we're so worried about whether we'll succeed or fail, or what we will look like, that we're too anxious to even get out there and give it a try. Jesus invites each of us to participate fully in the dance of our lives with Him. It's an exhilarating feeling to simply close our eyes and let him lead us through this dance.

There will be refreshments, music (swing/ballroom etc.) and dance as well. Please contact me by email if you plan to come: charles@gmint.org. If you're interested in volunteering to help out with this night: bringing food or helping with set up or tear down, running sound, let me know that as well. All are welcome. There is no charge, though donations are always appreciated. Thank you!

The Holy Hug

Today when I asked my son, Leif, what his happiest moment of the day was, he mumbled something barely audible from the back seat. So, I asked him to repeat it twice more. He finally shouted over the noise of the car in a shy but insistent tone, “It was when I cuddled with you.”

A few minutes earlier on the couch at home, I had held him all balled up in my lap like a baby, my arms surrounding him completely, and told him “I used to hold you like this when you were a baby, but someday, I won’t be able to hold you because you’ll be so big!” I was picturing the way he used to fall asleep every night, his whole body draped across my chest as I gently rubbed his back, and trying to imagine how I could wrap my arms around an 18 year old like that.

He made a baby voice and said, “Dada?” then he made a face and asked, “What did I call you when I was a baby?” 
I couldn’t remember until Dawn came over and reminded us, “You used to call him Dadoo!” My heart melted to remember that. 
Then Leif said, “When I’m big, you won’t be able to put me in a small package anymore.”

My second son, Owen, is the same way, only more so. When he awakes from a nap, sleepy and a little crabby, nothing will do for him but to be held. He simply says, “I NEED you!” over and over until I pick him up and he can snuggle into my neck and wrap his little legs around my body. Sometimes he just cries quietly, but usually he sighs deeply and relaxes into the embrace.

I write this down to celebrate the moments, but also because God reminded me in the middle of it how much we all need to be held. We need to know that we are loved and held close by a loving Father.

Romans 5:5; 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 8:15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 

By Him, this Spirit joined to our spirit, we cry out in our lisping new creation baby selves, “Dadoo, Dadoo!” When we feel His embrace through the Spirit, we enter into the most healing, life giving and regenerating experience a human being can have.

The eternal God is a dwelling place, And underneath are the everlasting arms (Deut.33:27). Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. Matthew 10:15.

Could this be because it is only as children that we can allow ourselves to be embraced like this, only as a child can I see myself surrounded by this Father’s love that holds me so tightly? But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Eph. 2:13  Though we were once far away, we are now brought near into a holy hug in Jesus. God wants each of us to know that we are loved as the prodigal, whom the Father runs to embrace and “cannot stop kissing him”. That’s the way I feel about my boys, and it is how the Father feels about each of us in Jesus. He expresses Himself in the bear hug of the Spirit.

As I reflect on this, I’m brought back to the story of a person I met with in my office a few weeks ago. She grew up with an absent father who was in and out of prison her entire childhood. One of the things I love about her is that she has learned to listen to God’s voice in her own heart. She has spent years learning from Him how to live a life free of the kind of destruction that plagued her family as she was growing up. She now knows how to make good choices based on what God tells her. But, I knew as soon as I met her that she had something new to learn in this journey. She knew how to listen to Jesus for instruction, and obey: very important. What she had not yet seen, or known, was how to listen to Him for something even more valuable: to simply be loved for who she is. You see, she never had a father hold her with complete affection and unconditional love, so her heart still needs that more than anything else. Now she is more aware of that than ever before. This past week, she had a remarkable experience of being hugged by Jesus in a time of prayer we had together, simply listening for His loving voice. These are the words she shared, through copious tears of joy:

He keeps reminding me

that I am His Beloved

He says, “I love you so much

but you have no idea how much.”

I see me sitting on His lap

like a child

He’s wearing a huge white robe

He has His arms around me

I’m sitting there so comfortably

there’s so much peace there

it’s comfortable

just sitting there

soaking it up.

He always has to remind me

of how proud He is of me

because I think I disappoint.

He says, “My daughter in whom I am well pleased

you and I are One.”

Now, as with many people that I meet with, she had been struggling with some negative emotions from the break down of a relationship in her life. That kind of pain is what often brings us to seek out and find the embrace of the Holy Spirit. The following week, this is what she shared about the results of her experience of being held by Jesus:

“Our last session changed things.

I have not cried all week.

I’m sleeping through the night.

I feel lighter. I’m in a different place,

trusting God more

paying attention that I’m in His presence.

It’s a peaceful feeling.

I’m learning to be sensitive to Him

in little things.

I’m learning to include Him

in more areas.”

-->

Now, for someone who already is walking with Jesus, to have such a powerful experience of His love, that drew her deeper into His embrace and changed the way she feels about herself, that is an amazing thing to be celebrated! It’s just the kind of thing I get to see every day as I walk with people and God reveals His love to them.

I want to say thank you to all of you who are a part of what He is doing through me. Your support and encouragement makes you an important part of this HUG that He keeps giving to the people He loves so dearly.

I hope that you can feel His everlasting arms around you today. If you’re not the kind of person who can feel that kind of thing inside your heart and mind at the current time, then maybe you want to go out and hug someone you love: your child, or a spouse, or a parent, or even a friend. Not a short hug either, a real long embrace that says, I really love you!

Jesus says, “whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.” Think of it this way: if you hug someone you love, you’re hugging Jesus in that person. Take a moment to reflect on that fact. Then ponder this, “When you give a hug, you get a hug.” Now stop to realize that Jesus is hugging you right back in the middle of that hug. He’s IN “the least of these” embracing you right back. Yes, God is that good. So, spread the love around, and enjoy Him with all your heart.

Charles

A poem for the new year:

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Book of Hours
Love Poems to God
See John 7:38
http://mobile.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%207:%2038&version=MSG

Blanket's Creek

It's been a long time since I've ridden my mountain bike, but today I was struck by how my mind goes into a very quiet place when I ride. Thoughts come and go, but the flow of the trail and of my attention to each tiny adjustment of my body and my bike, keeps me in a place that is very like a meditation the entire time. I rode for an hour and a half at Blanket's Creek trails, rode every inch of trail, and I hardly ever felt the need to come up for air. Things came into my mind, asked for my attention, and I let them go with the very next breath, the next rotation of the pedals, the next banked turn. The focus of my mind and body was so pleasant, the air so cool, the light so clear filtering through the leaves, I never wanted it to end. They've made some really nice improvements to the trail out there, built up the banks on the switchbacks on the VanMichaels loop so that you can scream around them like a BMX track. It's like a playground for big kids. So grateful for Fun!

Did You Hear Thunder?

"⁷ My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me." John 10:27

I believe that we always hear the voice of God; often we ignore what we hear; sometimes we think we hear just the noise of our own thoughts,  and it doesn't make any sense to us, but He is always there, in us, faithfully speaking truth, imparting Life.

The goal of this journey I walk with people is not to fix them, it is to lead them into intimacy with Jesus. A beautiful side effect of learning to listen for his voice speaking in our hearts is that our day to day thoughts and feelings are radically changed, and so our behavior is changed as well.

When we bump into Jesus, we can’t help being changed by him. His presence, his personality, his grace, his lovingkindness, his words of reassurance, comfort and delight over us: all these are incredibly powerful if we will let go of ourselves and experience him for a moment. Each facet of who he is transforms our hearts.

When he walked the earth in flesh and blood as a man, people followed Jesus out of sheer delight. He is a pure joy to be around. Even though he was always saying impossible things like “Be Ye perfect as God is perfect”, or extreme things like, “sell all you have, give it to the poor, and come follow me”, people still wanted to be around him all the time. He is always trying to wake us up to our true poverty and invite us to come receive from him. I’m sure people back then didn’t understand, and we don't either, but that doesn’t matter, we want this LIFE he is offering.

 Whenever people give him even the briefest of chances to speak into their hearts, we find joy bubbling up, joy even to tears, and release of emotions, and false beliefs that may have been festering for years.

Take this woman I recently met with. We have been meeting for about 9 months now, and I have seen incredible changes in her heart and mind, and in her demeanor, and it has all happened because she learned (I’d like to say I taught her, but I didn’t really) that Jesus speaks in her heart, every day, every moment, and she can be with him in her thoughts any time she wants to. Although her story is a very tough one, full of betrayal, abandonment and lies, she has learned to look at it all differently because of God's interpretation of her life.

As we sat down for a mentoring session the other day, I pulled out a Taylor Johnson personality test she took 9 months ago, and another one that she just took a week or so ago. This test is a self-report designed to show what is going on inside a person’s emotions on a deep level, sometimes even deeper than they themselves are aware. It can be quite revealing. On several key markers she has seen incredible transformation, so I thought it was time to celebrate together. Her levels of depression and anxiety, since learning to listen to Jesus, have gone from very high, to quite normal and healthy levels  Her level of emotional expressiveness has gone from extremely inhibited to much more expressive and responsive. One of the most significant markers, subjectivity (which measures the tendency to be caught up in emotion and self-absorbed) has come way down as she learns to see things from the far broader and more balanced perspective of Jesus. Finally, after walking through forgiveness, we have seen her level of hostility drop as she becomes much more tolerant and understanding of herself and others. Her view of herself is far more positive as well; she is learning to rest in the grace of God and not in her own performance. None of the circumstances of her life have changed, but her inner world has been changed by simply spending time listening and enjoying the presence of Jesus.

Now, I’m not saying that measurements like this test are the way God looks at us, or the way He wants us to look at ourselves, but it can be very encouraging to be able to see the change in the way a person feels, thinks and acts put down in paper on a graph! There is a metric of celebration present here, yet the transformation that Jesus has worked is beyond any measurement or chart. It is a change in the spirit that is ineluctably working its way out into our daily lives. Learning to tune into what He is doing, as this woman has done, is simply a wonderful catalyst to witnessing the change as it happens.

I see changes like this in people every day, even in the course of just an hour of talking, or a few minutes of prayer time with Jesus.

Before Jesus went to the cross, He stood before a crowd and asked the Father to glorify His name. The Father replied, presumably in a voice audible to all who stood by “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” But the crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

The same is true for all of us. We may be tempted to write off the miracle of Jesus speaking into our hearts as nothing but our own thoughts. Someone standing by might say something that amounts to the dismissal of “did you hear thunder?” But together with Jesus, you and I have a chance to witness and celebrate the miracle. Because we're with Jesus in this process, we can hear the voice of the Father saying to each of us “This is my beloved, on whom my favor rests” and so much more . . . as He reveals His amazing love to us.

I praise God for your participation in the message of the good news with me.

Charles

The first cold morning of fall: A Sunday Morning Bicycle Ride

Sope Creek from the Bridge

first light 55deg.
Paper Mill Loop 25miles.

The long descent on Murdoch rd
the sun glancing into my eyes through the trees,
across the stream and around
the most delightfully banked curve
rolling past the meadow where
a flock of geese wander
and two foals nibble the dewy grass.

Bishop's lake Rd is newly paved
so the rollers are a smooth black ribbon
stretched out across the dells and hollows
where mists rise and dance across the water
toward the sky in whisps caught by the morning light blinding me each time I turn my head to look,
too bright to enjoy, to beautiful to ignore.

Climbing the hill due east toward the catholic church
I ride directly into the rising sun,
the field of my vision fully obscured
by the blinding light
and I shiver to know the cars behind
cannot see my form
standing on the pedals
to propel me up the hill,
their windshields like my glasses
a complete whiteout.

Little Willeo dips and rolls and finally
climbs up the long hill to Johnsons Ferry Rd.
On an empty stretch of Woodlawn
I sit up for the first time
pedaling with no hands, like a kid again,
and eat a granola bar
out of my jersey pocket.

On the descent of Paper Mill toward sope creek
I scream in delight as I feel the bike accelerate
up over 40 mph
and then the electric shock of adrenaline
pulses through every cell of my body
on the sharp curve where I think for just a moment
"I could go down, this pavement could be wet with the dew"
but I cannot brake now already committed to the line I've chosen,
knowing the brakes will only send me careening
into or over the guard rail and the creek below.

But then the thought is reigned in
as I bring my mind back to the breath
and the body resumes it's gentle rhythmic pulse.

A brief pause on the bridge above the rocks
and then the labor of the long climb up out of the ravine.
Now I'm feeling the pain in my legs.
It's a short ride this morning but already
I'm tempted by demoralizing thoughts,
slower than usual, feeling old, just going
to get slower as the years go on,
but no, return to the breath,
enjoy this moment now, live it to the full
whether you are going full out
or holding back because you're just not there today.

Still, finish as strong as you can on the climb up Holly Springs,
not a very long ride, but still a good one, a kind of rolling meditation
that gave my mind and body a break from the mundane
making the rest of the day a little more magical
in the glow of chemicals my body happily produces
as it rebuilds muscle fibers.

My wife and children's faces look a little sweeter
after this time, the warm house inviting in the morning light
the smell of coffee brewing welcomes me in.

Guest Post: Denise Yaun

 

The following is a writing from Denise's pen when she simply allowed herself to listen to what Jesus was saying to her heart. It is part of an exercise that we participated in as part of our last Thursday Night Live meeting. The meditation begins with the words "Lord I know that you love me, and that you speak to me out of your love . . ." and the voice is Jesus.

His Flow In Me

I flow in your thoughts, your mind, your world, around and around you celebrating my love for you. 

I flow in your writing, baking, gardening, talking, breathing, living. 

I flow in your anger, misunderstanding, softly serenading your wounded heart. 

I flow in my rejoicing that you are mine and I am yours. 

I flow in your quietness, the stillness of morning as you sit on your sofa writing to me. 

I flow in your comings and goings, trips to the store, errands to run. 

You may lose sight of me  on your mission to do as much as you can, but it is my flow that slows you down, tires you, causes you to sit down and rest, questioning me why your energy is depleted. 

I flow when you feel stuck, dissatisfied, annoyed with the circumstances of life. 

My flow carries you forward when you feel like you’ve taken two steps back. 

My flow radiates, permeates your entire being. 

My flow keeps you with me.

Denise Yaun

08/30/12