At Calvary we are making our way through a teaching series called, “Undaunted Faith.”  It’s all about developing a faith that will stand strong in the face of disappointment, difficulty and danger.  (Click here to listen.) The Old Testament book of Numbers, chapters 13-14, contains a story about daunted faith.

God has led the people of Israel out of Egypt — think plagues, Red Sea parting, manna from heaven, pillar of fire, all that stuff — and  now they stand at boundary of the land promised to them for a home, the Promised Land.  Moses sends 12 men to spy out the land.  They come back with a good news – bad news report.  “The good news is that the land is amazing.  The bad news is that there are giants in the land.  We will never defeat them.  If we go in there the land will devour us!”

It makes Egypt look like Motel 6, but there are giants in the land.  There’s no way we can do it. Did you ever experience that? Someone paints a vision of God’s future for you and it captures your heart. It inspires you, but the moment you step forward it gets difficult…maybe it gets so hard that you think you heard God wrong.

Your faith becomes daunted.  Did you know that it wasn’t Moses’ idea to send the spies into the land?  It was God’s idea.  God wanted them to see the bounty and the difficulty. He wanted them to see the blessings and the danger.  Do you know what? I believe God wanted them to experience a bit of uncertainty. He could have made it easy for them.  He could have made victory certain and clear, but He leaves it uncertain.

He gives us a vision for the amazing force for good that would be unleashed on the world if Penn State was transformed by the power of God and then we are confronted by the giants.  He gives you a heart for your neighborhood and you knock on the door to find someone who hates you or has been hurt by your church. He gives you a passion to be a person of integrity in the workplace and the next thing you know a boss is asking you to lie or lose your job.

And we get this huge sense of uncertainty. Can I do this?  Is God with me? What’s going to happen to me if I do what God wants me to do? There are giants in the land.

For almost two years, I’ve felt that Calvary, not just me, but we were moving into a new chapter. Chapter One together was all about love. God called us to grow in our love for each Him, for each other, and for the world.  That’s the very heart of a church without walls.  Our second chapter together was all about hope. Hope is not just wishing, it’s waiting. Hope is born in our hearts when someone we trust tells us that something better than anything we’ve ever imagined is on the way. Hope is all about perseverance.  I could give you story after story of the periods of patient perseverance that God has brought us through in the last 10 years.

In the next chapter I think He wants to grow us deeper in our faith. He wants to show us there are no walls that can be put around what he can do through us if we will trust Him. So what does God do when he wants to grow our faith?  He plants us in a season of uncertainty.  This is the new lesson he’s been teaching me.  The chaos of uncertainty is the soil of faith. 

Last year Lynn and I felt God leading us to candidate at another church which led to a season of great uncertainty for us and Calvary.  Add to that a great deal of staff shuffling recently and the sense that God still has another chapter in my life, but not really having clarity on what it looks like.  Add to that all the events of the last 18 months at Penn State combined with many personal uncertainties and we have been going through a season of uncertainty.

But uncertainty is the soil for growing faith. It’s like when someone says, “Never pray for patience because when you pray for patience God sends someone to annoy you!”  (Don’t you love being the answer to those prayers. :)  In the same way, “Never pray for more faith if you aren’t willing to go through a season of uncertainty.

God uses uncertainty to make us answer the question, “Can I trust God in the face of difficulty, danger or disappointment? Or perhaps the even more important question is “Will I?” Will I trust God in the face of difficulty, danger or disappointment? “Can I” keeps it theoretical? “Will I” brings it into the reality of the moment.  Will I?  Will you?

God grow our faith.

June 10 is an amazing day in history.  In 1752 on June 10, Ben Franklin’s kite was struck by electricity, paving the way for the internet.  In 1869 on June 10, the S.S. Agnes arrived in New Orleans with the first ever shipment of frozen beef, making possible our occasional order of a shipment of mouth-watering Omaha steaks.  In 1943 on June 10, President FDR signed into law the withholding tax bill, yeah for W-2 day!  In 1975 on June 10, the Rockefeller Panel reported that the CIA had 300,000 spy-files on American citizens. (Remember the good old days when the CIA only had 300,000 spy-files on American citizens?)  In 1985 on June 10, the Coca Cola company announced that they were ending their failed experiment with “New Coke” and that the old coke formula was returning to it’s rightful place.  Finally who will ever forget that on June 10, 1990 Burger King began using Newman’s Own Salad dressing.

But in the midst of all those momentous June 10th events, the most important one of all — at least to me — took place in 1984 when I married Lynn.  The three most important days of my life were my birth

–not being narcissistic just realizing that without that the other two dates don’t happen — my rebirth (a Wednesday evening in 1967 when I decided that I wanted to become a follower of Jesus) and the day I married Lynn.

I don’t remember too much about the first two days, but I remember the third.  It was a 100+ degree day.  I remember that clearly because the church in which we got married had no air conditioning.  I remember greeting people I never saw before and never saw again after the wedding, Lynn’s distant relatives not wedding crashers.  I remember I had a brown tux.  Even though I wanted a black tux, black apparently clashed with Lynn’s ivory gown.  I remember we got a lot of Lenox china.  I remember that I sweat (or is it sweated) from places I didn’t even realize had pores.

But most importantly I remember Lynn.  I remember watching her walk down the aisle, wow.  I remember singing, “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us” together.  I remember looking at her as spoke our vows.  I won’t post a picture from our wedding day because it would simply confirm for you in living color, that I married so far above what I deserved.  But for those of you who know Lynn and I, you already know that.

Because it’s not just what I saw on the outside that attracted me to her, it was her heart, her laughter, her compassion for people, her innocence, her friendship and her character.  That’s still the case, her heart has simply gotten more beautiful over the course of the last 29 years.

More people see and know what I do, but the people who have been served by Lynn are often more deeply changed… and for the last 29 years, no one has been more served and more changed by Lynn than I.  She’s not perfect, but sometimes it seems that God allows our imperfections to complement each other even more than our strengths, and at the very least they give us something to laugh about and we do enjoy laughing.

From the first time we met in a shower at Bethel :) to our double-date switch-a-roo; from the adding Sarah, Katy, Jake and Josh to our family to the addition of more; from vacations and moves to struggles and joys; from drives in the fall to Myanmar mission trips; as my best friend, my wife, the mother of our children, and partner in ministry… 29 years later, I am so glad that God put us on this  journey together.

Calvary’s theme verse comes from Isaiah 64:4, “For since the world began, no ear has heard, no eye has seen a God like you who works for those who wait for him.”  But if you are anything like me, I hate to wait.  So why wait?  In the last three post, that questions was answered in two ways.  First we wait because He is a God who will amaze us.  Secondly we wait because we desperately need him.  We need him because Isaiah says that our sin runs deep.  When we display the best of our best life, it’s nothing but filthy rags. This isn’t a legalistic rant or a judgmental hypocrisy. This is the Creator’s diagnosis of our hearts. This is the reality of our position before God, without Christ. 

We desperately need God because our sin runs deep.  This is hard, bad news, but there is good news; gospel.  We wait… Because He will come close.  Sin runs deep…we are infected with it…we want to do our own thing in our own time for our own glory and God turns his back on us. We lament. So we cry for his presence and something shifts…the language turns in Isaiah 64 intimate and personal.  

And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand.  Isaiah 64:8

Do you see the shift? Isaiah goes from asking the nation-scaring God to rend the heavens with fearsome fireworks to asking the Father God to put his hands on our hearts and shape us inside. The picture of the Father as potter and his people as the clay breaks this lament wide-open. It’s the New Covenant leaking into the Old Testement. It’s relationship. Rather than God bursting forth, God is invited in. Rather than nations trembling and mountains quaking the Father is shaping our hearts. 

Do you understand what this means? You are not alone nor are you left alone. The fingerprints of God are all over you.  And  sometimes it hurts, he pushes and prods and digs his fingers into the recesses of our lives…but…He Is shaping you for a purpose. God is using people and events and circumstances to shape us. The good and the hard, the amazing wonder filled moments and the painful wound filled moments. Nothing gets by Him. Nothing gets wasted. Time is not wasted when we wait for Him. He is shaping us for a purpose. His purpose. Not ours. It’s not the place of the clay to tell the potter what to shape. It’s simply our place to be shaped and to be amazed by the work of his hands. 

And sometimes it’s not just the work of his hands that hurts, sometimes it’s even the fire isn’t it? No one wants to be in the fire, but it’s not until we are fired that…we can retain our shape…and live out our purpose. And what is the purpose of a pot that’s been fashioned by the potter? The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7 (NLT)

We can be used in so many different ways, but our ultimate purpose is to be a container for a great treasure. Think about that for a moment…what is a jar? It’s just a container right? Most jars are defined by what they contain; water bottles, a flower vase, a cookie jar, a piggie bank, a fine bottle of wine. The value of a jar is determined by what it contains… empty jars go in recycling.

Our bodies, our lives are meant to be containers.  Our value is determined, not by how we look on the outside, but by what we are filled with on the inside. Paul says we are jars of clay and we are filled with an incredible treasure.  It’s the treasure that Jesus told the disciples to wait for in Jerusalem.  It’s the treasure of the Spirit of God, the presence of Christ in us. 

We wait because in the waiting God comes near to shape us, the potter with the clay.  We wait because in the waiting we are filled with His presence.  That is worth the wait.

The prophet Isaiah records this corporate prayer of the people of Israel in Isaiah 64:1-4,  

Oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down! How the mountains would quake in your presence! As fire causes wood to burn and water to boil, your coming would make the nations tremble. Then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame! When you came down long ago, you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations. And oh, how the mountains quaked! For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him! Isaiah 64:1-4

That’s a prayer that fires me up!  I love it, all of it…except for the last three words.  Wait for him.  I don’t like to wait.  So the question is, “Why Wait?”  Why wait, even if it’s for God?  In the last two posts, (Why Wait and Why Wait II) the answer was given, “Because God is worth the wait.”  If we wait for God, he will amaze us.

But the answer goes deeper than amazement.  We wait for God because we desperately need him.  Listen to Isaiah’s words in vs 5-7

You welcome those who gladly do good, who follow godly ways. But you have been very angry with us, for we are not godly. We are constant sinners; how can people like us be saved? We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind. Yet no one calls on your name or pleads with you for mercy. Therefore, you have turned away from us and turned us over to our sins. 

Wow. Just stop there for a moment. Would you?  Just pause.  Let the holy hush of the Holy Spirit’s conviction settle on your heart. Don’t get defensive. This isn’t a legalistic rant or a judgmental hypocrisy. This is the Creator’s diagnosis of our hearts. This is the reality of our position before God, without Christ. Would you just read it again and then close your eyes…and ask the Spirit to show you…

We are constant sinners…infected and impure with sin. When we display the best of our best stuff, our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind. Yet no one calls on your name.  We don’t take it seriously.  We don’t plead with you for mercy.  Therefore, you have turned away from us…

Isaiah 64:1-8 is a corporate lament for the presence of God from a people who were missing God. Do you understand what that means?  This description of infection and filthy rags like something out of the “Walking Dead;” this Is the life of those who do not wait.  There are only two choices either we wait for God, or we get infected and swept away by our sins.”

This is the heart of our sin. We do not wait for God.  This is the heart of my sin. Christ is calling me to come and be with him and I keep settling for doing for him. And the starting point for us is to admit that we would rather take care of our own lives than wait for God. We would rather do what we think should be done when we should be waiting for God.  The starting point is to admit that we don’t want to wait…not even for God.  The reality is that the reason we don’t wait, is the very same reason that we desperately need God. We desperately need God because…our sin runs deep. 

If you knew the totality of my past sin, my present imperfections and my future failures…you would wonder why I am a pastor…the sin in my life runs deeper than I care to admit and that is such difficult, hard, bad news.  But the bad news serves to highlight the glorious good news… here is the gospel. We wait because He will come close. 

Sin runs deep…we are infected with it…we want to do our own thing in our own time for our own glory and God turns his back on us. We lament. We cry for his presence and something shifts…the language turns intimate and personal.  And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand.  Isaiah 64:8

We wait because this is what, this is who we need.  We need God to be our father and our potter.

Calvary’s theme verse for the year is Isaiah 64:4…”For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him!  I don’t like to wait.  But when you read the three verses before it, you find that it really is a prayer for God to come and amaze us.  Would you be willing to wait, if at the end of your waiting, you would experience the amazement of God at work?

Do you understand that when God says, “WAIT.” He’s promising you that there will be a tomorrow. Wait is a word of hope. God’s “wait is always tied to a promise, which simply means there’s more amazement to come. I’m not saying we never go through difficult times. We live in a fallen world…but we live for an amazing God, a good, joy-filled amazing creator. I love how Isaiah describes this God in Isaiah 29. He writes,

The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”  Did you catch that? God is bummed because people’s hearts are all bricked up and their worship is filled with dry rules. There’s no joy. There’s no amazement. So what does God decide to do?

“Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder… Isaiah 29:14 (NIV)

I’m going to amaze them. I’m gonna blow their minds, knock their socks off, I’m gonna bring a smile to their faces, if it’s the last thing I do. Let me ask you, when is the last time you waited long enough to let God astound you? When we were in Hawaii for our family vacation about 8 years ago, we had one of those wonder upon wonder moments the day we went snorkeling. We went on a charter, a small boat that held only 6. So it was just our family. The guide took us to a bay, the same bay where Captian Cook landed, and supposedly some of the best snorkeling in the world. And it was amazing; a reef around the bay, filled with the colors of the rainbow…amazing fish. And then less than a hundred yards out the reef disappears with a straight drop, thousands of feet deep.

While the reef was amazing, I have to say that swimming out over the abyss was a bit unnerving, scary even. So we were snorkeling, — the boys were with me and the girls were with Lynn — and at some point Lynn swam up beside me and asked me if I had seen the girls. I said I didn’t know. But a little later I was near our boat and the guide told me that he had sent the girls way out there… and he point out toward some kayaks in deep water, over the abyss.  “Why would you send them out there?” I asked. “Dolphins,” he said.

So we bravely swam out to join the girls…and before you know it, we were swimming with dolphins.  Pods of dolphins all around us, spinners.  They would come out of the air, spin, and dive down.  There was one pod that was playing with a leaf, two adults and three young dolphins.  They swam within 5 feet of us. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had.

When we left for the bay that morning, Lynn had prayed, “God would you amaze us today. Give us something that will make us smile.” On the way home our guide said, “I can’t believe that happened, dolphins don’t come over to that side of the bay more than two or three times a year. You were really lucky.”

We weren’t lucky… God just decided to amaze us.  You may be thinking, “I’ve never had the dolphin experience.”  Can I tell you with the greatest certainty I can muster that swimming with dolphins is like garbage compared to the reality of His presence.  The question is, “Are we willing to wait? Because when we wait, He astounds us with wonder upon wonder and we find that He is so worth it.

The prophet Isaiah records this corporate prayer of the people of Israel in Isaiah 64:1-4,

Oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down! How the mountains would quake in your presence! As fire causes wood to burn and water to boil, your coming would make the nations tremble. Then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame! When you came down long ago, you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations. And oh, how the mountains quaked! For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him! Isaiah 64:1-4

That’s a prayer that fires me up!  I love it, all of it…except for the last three words.  Wait for him.  I don’t like to wait. I don’t like it when there’s a car ahead of me at the MacDonald’s drive-thru. If there are too many in the drive-thru, I park and go in for my food, but I memorize the car that would have been ahead of me and then I watch to make sure I made the quicker choice! I was on my way to Clearfield on Thursday to do some coaching with a pastor and I got behind a little Prius trying to make his hybrid go farther than a car should go on a gallon of gas.  I just wanted to buy him a bike. I don’t like to wait.

And you know what? I’m in good company, right?

We live in a culture where companies make billions of dollars selling bad food fast. Amazon invites us to set up a one click account so we don’t have to wait for two clicks to buy a book we can instantly download. We instant message and instagram. We pay extra at the amusement park so we can go to the front of the line. We lol with our bff so that people don’t have to wait for our txt.

We don’t really like to wait do we?  It’s hard to wait. Then we hear these words, it’s Calvary’s theme verse for 2013.. “For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him!” Isaiah 64:4

So why wait? That’s the question…why wait? Isaiah writes, “When you came down long ago, you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations. And oh, how the mountains quaked! For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him! Is. 64:3-4

We wait because God is worth the wait.  We wait for God to amaze us. My prayer shield is made up of about 30 guys at Calvary who have made a commitment to pray and fast for me each month. And I’ll tell you…any good thing that comes from me has their fingerprints on it. 2 weeks ago I got an email from Andy on my prayer shield. The email just said, “I’m praying for you…and I just have a feeling that something awesome is coming. I don’t know what or when but I’m praying for you…”

Did you ever get one of those words of encouragement that come at just the right time? That was one of those.  And I thought to myself, “I receive that as a word from you God.” A couple of days later, I shared that message with Lynn, “something awesome is coming”… and as I shared it, a news story came up that the powerball lottery had risen to almost $6 million so I leaned over to Lynn and I said, “What do you think, is that the awesome that is coming?”

Now I know a lot of you just think this is silly but on more than one ocassion I’ve had a one-sided conversation with God about the lottery…detailing all the reasons why he should give me the numbers. I mean there’s even some verse in the Bible about all the riches of the gentiles being given to the people of God and what better way than that!

So Saturday came and I was studying and it was getting close to the time when the selling of those tickets would be finished…so I called Lynn to ask her if she had gotten a ticket.  Because I kind of told God a while back that I wouldn’t buy a ticket unless he supernaturally gave me the numbers. So I was hoping that Lynn had bought one, but she said…nope I’m not gonna buy one, that’s your deal. So I’m sitting there…it’s about 9pm and I’m wrestling with whether or not I’m gonna buy a ticket. Because what if that’s the awesome that God wants to do?

And then this thought came, a question really, I think from his Spirit…  “Is that really the awesome that you want? Almost immediately came my response…with a bit of unforeseen emotion, “No God, if you’re going to do something awesome I don’t want to settle for the lottery. I want something more. I want you.”

See I think one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to wait is because we think our awesome is so much better than God’s awesome. But when we come to the point where we can say, “I want you God. I want what you want for me. I want you to do it. I want you to do it when you want it to be done. I want your awesome not mine;” he is a God who will amaze you. That is worth the wait.

A few months ago a father died.  It happens all the time, but this father died in Japan and the story of his death went world-wide.  It happened in the small rural town of Yubetsu during a severe March snowstorm.  Mikio Okada left work to pick up his nine-year-old daughter Natsune from school, but they didn’t make it home.  Mikio’s truck got stuck in the drifts of a driving blizzard…about a 1/2 mile away from home.  

Natsune’s mother died two years ago and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why — as neighbors described him — he was a doting father who often would go to work late so that he could begin his day by eating breakfast with his daughter.

At 4pm, Mikio called relatives to let them know that they had become stranded, stuck in a snow drift.  He said that they were going to walk the remaining 1/2 mile home.  But with winds up to 70 miles per hour and temperatures — not counting windchill — at 21 degrees, they just couldn’t make it.  They were found about 300 yards from the truck.  If that was the extent of the story it would not have gone world wide, but there is more.

Rescuers found father Okada’s body hunched up against a warehouse wall.  Natsune was beneath him, craddled in his arms and wearing his coat.  Mikio used his body, his coat and the warehouse wall to provide a refuge for his daughter.  Rescuers said she was weeping weakly in his arms.  The father gave his life for his daughter.

Here are a few thoughts on this Memorial Day weekend.

1) On Memorial Day we remember those who gave their life as a sacrifice.  Regardless of the cause, there is something powerful in the stories of life sacrificed for others and it is important for us to remember.  We learn from the stories of our shared past and sometimes we are inspired by the stories of our shared past.  It is good to remember.

2) The world is in great need of fathers who will give their lives for their children.  And sometimes the greatest giving comes not from the dying but from the living of our lives for our children.  We say we would be willing to die for our kids, but are we willing to go in late to work so that we can begin our day with them.  The sacrifices of a life lived well matter just as much as the sacrifice of a noble death.  I’m not saying that children should be center of our lives, only God deserves and can handle being the center of our lives.  I’m simply talking about truly valuing our children as gifts from God.

3) I can’t get through Memorial Day without remembering the battle fought on my behalf by Christ.  For though the cross was more, it was not less than the battle of all battles.  It was a battle against sin and death for my life.  Through Christ’s death on the cross, I not only know the depth of God’s love for me, I am set free from sin and death.  I am given a new life, a new family, a new future.  

So as I remember I am thankful.  I am thankful for a man who reminds me of the power of a love that gives.  I am thankful for my own parents who have modeled a life of generosity and sacrifice for their children.  I am thankful for people who have given their lives in battle for me.  Most of all I’m thankful for Christ.  I’m thankful for the way that my life has been changed by Christ’s sacrifice…which ultimately became the great victory of eternity.

That’s what I am remembering today.

FLOOD THE VALLEY.  It started with a desire to gather for worship and prayer.  The verse that has shaped what we do is Isaiah 44:3, I will pour water on those who are thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.  I will pour out my Spirit on your children, and my blessings on your descendants.”  On the second Sunday of every month we gather to call out to God to flood our valley with His Spirit and His blessings.  Last Sunday was our eight month…and we focused on our youth.  If you missed it, what a great night.  They helped lead us in worship and shared what God has been doing in their lives.  So cool!  We prayed that God would pour out His Spirit on our children. I’m not lying when I tell you that Flood is one of the highlights of my month.

This week I ran across a story connected to that same verse and that same prayer.  God would you flood our valley.

The year was 1950. The famous revival on the windswept Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Outer Hebrides was already underway. It was a revival that began when two elderly sisters fervently prayed. Peggy Smith was 84 and completely blind. Christine, her younger sister by two years, could hardly walk and was bent over double from arthritis. God had given them a simple promise from Scripture, that same scripture.  “I will pour water on him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground…” With a deep burden in their hearts they began praying. Twice a week for many months, they went down on feeble knees at 10:00 at night and did not rise until 3 or 4:00 in the morning. In the midst of their prayers, God gave them a vision of a man they had never met, a man who would be used by God to change the island.

The man’s name was Duncan Campbell – and he would be the first to admit the dramatic spiritual change that happened was not because of him. In his later accounts of this awakening, Campbell would write,  

“In speaking about the revival in the Hebrides, I would like to make it perfectly clear what I understand to be real revival. When I speak of revival, I am not thinking of high-pressure evangelism. I am not thinking of crusades or of special efforts convened and organized by people. That is not in my mind at all. Revival is far beyond evangelism at its highest level. It is a moving of God whereby the whole community suddenly becomes God-conscious before anyone says a word about God.”

When God showed up, people on the island were inexplicably drawn to Christ. Without publicity, telephones, facebook or twitter, they were awakened in the middle of the night and drawn to gather in a farmer’s field or at a local church. Sometimes before they could get to a gathering spot, they simply fell by the side of the road confessing their sins to God.  Starting with the small town of Barvas, the entire Isle of Lewis was being transformed. Whole towns were being converted to Christ, with the exception of the stubborn little parish of Arnol.

Arnol was defiant in its resistance to the gospel. No one wanted to hear what Duncan Campbell had to say. In fact, the town held opposition meetings to denounce the revival. Campbell and his fellow leaders knew that the only answer was prayer. They gathered one evening in a farmhouse and began to pray, crying out to God to keep the promises He had made to them.  At midnight, Campbell asked John, the local blacksmith, to pray.  John the blacksmith prayed for two hours. Near the end of his prayer, with his cap in his hand, John looked heavenward and said,

“God, do you know that your honor is at stake? You promised to pour water on the thirsty and floods on the dry ground. . . . I stand before You as an empty vessel and I am thirsty – thirsting for Thee and for a manifestation of Thy power. I’m thirsty to see the devil defeated in this parish. I’m thirsty to see this community gripped as You gripped Barvas. I’m longing for revival and, God, You are not doing it! I’m thirsty and You promised to pour water on me. God, Your honor is at stake, and I take it upon myself to challenge You now to fulfill Your covenant engagement.”

At that moment, the house shook violently. A jug on the sideboard crashed to the ground and broke. Those who were present said that wave after wave of power swept over the room. At the same time, the town of Arnol was awakened from its slumber. Lights went on. People came into the streets and started praying. Others knelt where they were and asked God to forgive them. Men carried chairs and women held stools, asking if there was room for them in the church. At 2:00 in the morning, revival came to this last resistant town on the island.  

Later Campbell would describe that season as a time when the communities were saturated with God.  Squeeze life and God comes out.  When we ask the question, “Why doesn’t God show up like that today?”  We probably need to take a step back and ask, “Where are the people who will pray like those two elderly sisters?  Where are people who won’t get bored with two hour prayers and all night prayer meetings?  Where are the people who will get out of bed at 2am if God calls them?

Join me in praying… God would you Flood the Valley with your Spirit…and would you start with me.

We’ve been married a month short of 29 years. She’s been part of my life for over 32 years. In fact, I was smitten by her well before we started dating, I think before we even talked. I knew when she finished her shift making chocolate chip cookies in the college coffeeshop, and I would wait by my window to watch her walk by. (Yes there was stalking before facebook.)  But I didn’t really know if she liked me, didn’t know if I had a chance with her.  I didn’t know till the night we had a Bethel all-skate, and the last song at the roller-skating rink was girl ask guy…and she skated in my direction. And after that I went to every length possible to make sure that she knew I wanted us to happen.

So many memories…

• Our first raquetball game… (yes I won and she didn’t let me)
• Going to scary movies together… (her idea)
• Watching her walk down the aisle… (there has never been a more beautiful bride)
• Our first apartment in Brooklyn and our scary neighbors…
• Raising our Kids…she is such an amazing mom…the best parts of Sarah, Katy, Jake and Josh have been shaped by her heart
• Scaring our Kids…I chuckle every time I think about it
• She is the Queen of the Practical Jokes…
• Watching her kneel down in a manger in Bethlehem and seeing a single tear roll down her cheek
• Walking together on multiple beaches, especially the one across the road from a little cottage…
• Family Vacations…the Outer Banks during Hurricane Dennis, Orlando, Hawaii, and even that kinda gross condo in Missouri…such good memories

She has been my greatest fan through tough times; my ministry partner in recent times; my truth-teller in times when I need it; and my best friend all the time. I can laugh with her till my stomach hurts. I can complain about life with her until I feel better and she spurs me on in my pursuit of God by both her words and her example.

I love watching her love the kids in Myanmar and I love watching the kids love her. I can’t count the number of people for whom she has prayed. In many cases nobody will know what a difference she has made in the lives of others till we watch the tapes in heaven.

Every personality test we take, we end up almost polar opposites and yet it is hard to imagine God shaping anyone, anymore perfect for me. She is not just our better half, she actually makes my half better. 32 years together is not nearly enough. I pray there are many more to come.

I love Lynn…it is at best an imperfect love and I don’t do nearly enough to show her or tell her…but I decided tonight that on the eve of her birthday –I won’t say how young she is, but she is not quite as young as I am– that I would tell her and you.

If you know her wish her happy birthday for me.

Next weekend, Calvary is closing our doors; four locations, eight worship gatherings, all closed.  Someone once said that every pastor should ask themselves the question, “If the doors of our church closed forever, would anyone in our community notice or care?”  Ever since I heard it, that simple question hooked deep into my heart and it hasn’t let go.  Next weekend we are closing our doors — not forever, just for the weekend — to go out and serve our community.  Love our neighbors.  Be the church, rather than just go to church.

600+ people from Calvary and 100+ people from a handful of other local congregations will be cityserving (www.sc-cityserve.com) through over 100 different projects.  From raking lawns to siding a mobile home to fixing up homes to visiting folks in the nursing home, we will be seeking to be living proof of a loving God.  Really what we are doing is planting seeds; seeds of grace, seeds of kindness, seeds of service.  But it is amazing what God can do with a seed.

Andy is a PSU alum. He attended Calvary as a student and a couple of years ago, he sent us an e-mail that included a short God-story. A former co-worker of his had been struggling through a divorce. When Andy was a student, he had invited her to Calvary a number of times, but she never came. For a variety of reasons and past experiences, she had been turned off by church. In the fall he had visited her while he was in town and while he was at her house, he noticed that the handle from her screen door was missing. He noticed because she was using a piece of string to open the door.

When he got home, he emailed a CityServe leader to see if any of Calvary’s lifegroups would be interested in the opportunity to go out, be the church without walls, and fix her door handle.  His email was forwarded to a man who just happened to have some spare screen door handles in his garage. He drove over and put it on and had a good chat with her. Andy writes this, “Soon after (she got her new door handle), she went to the small white church on Houserville Rd near her house. I am 95% sure she’s made a decision to follow Christ! I think the show of support by a church where she never even went really stirred her heart..and for her to finally start to pursue God after this… it’s awesome!”

Part of me wants to shake my head and say, “For crying out loud, it was just a door handle.” And then I heard Jesus saying, “Yeah ain’t it cool, what I can do with a seed.” Don’t miss the significance of small seeds…and listen, never stop looking for opportunities to love your neighbor. It’s not a once and done kind of thing. You have to keep planting seeds over and over and over again. We don’t want Calvary to be a storehouse of seeds that never get planted. We want to be scattered so that God can grow a 100x harvest.

If you haven’t signed up for CityServe there are still about 70 spots left.  Go to www.sc-cityserve.com (only until Tuesday 4/9 at noon).   Click the link below for more info.

Real Servants of Genius