"Be still and know that I am God..." (Ps 46:10)
These beautiful words have become ubiquitous in our Christian circles, but in the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means." (Hey, what kind of a blogger would I be if I didn't quote the most quotable movie of all time?). We use it to create a state of peacefulness. Who can help but take a refreshing breath while a lazy smile creeps onto his/her face after hearing these charming words? It's used as a stress reliever in our overly busy lives. How convenient for us. We even have a beautiful song using those words, the tune of which exudes peacefulness. What a joy-filled, peace-inducing phrase. Right? I don't think so.
Being still is the hardest work you will ever do. Not a physical stillness, but a stillness that demands the inactivity of pride, a stillness before God that truly gives Him all authority, exaltation, and permission to work mightily as only the God of the universe can and as He wills. Glory! It may be somewhat easy to say, and to even shout 'Hallelujah!' after, but it is agonizing to do.
This post is going to be personal and raw for us, because this has been our life, our work, and our ministry for the past six months. Stillness. Stillness before God. I'm letting out a sigh right now, not a sigh of pleasant peace, but a sigh over the (hopefully) nearly completed hard work done in us during this time of stillness before God. I apologize for the length of this post, but since I frequent the blog world only about once a month, you can split it up and read a few paragraphs a week. Then maybe by the time you finish this post I'll have another (shorter) post ready :) It's important for me to write this though 1) so you can know what's going on with us and 2) as a necessary component of this oh-so-wondrous season of being stilled and humbled.
As most of you know we have a strong call to serve God in ministry to this world. We spent our first semester while Jared was at Harding School of Theology in focused prayer for direction in our ministry. From that time on we have been pursuing church planting in London. Our time during grad school was the busiest of our lives. During this time of insanity we saw God walking powerfully before us into work in Europe, opening countless doors since we had no excess energy to spend to help get there ourselves. From an encouraging survey trip in 2011 with clear direction, to wonderful support from White Station CoC and Kairos Church Planting, to friends and connections in the UK, to my schooling through the Uof Leicester... The path was being laid before us. We made the decision to step out on faith and to move our family to Nashville last year in the hopes of getting our last leg of valuable training with Ethos, a 2,000 member, four-year-old church plant working mightily for God in Nashville. After 3 months of a "getting to know you" period, we took on an official role with Ethos and were so excited to be actively en route to London and our future ministry there.
At literally the exact time that we became official planter apprentices with Ethos, we went on our second survey trip to London, and the boom hit. This trip was the opposite of our first survey trip. We dealt with negative feelings, closed doors, the realities of how much we can accomplish as Americans, and much more reserve from the British ministers. This kicked off a time of continually closing doors, uncertainty, and spiritual warfare. Obviously we've been wrestling with so many questions about whether this is God helping us change directions for the future or Satan working to prevent that ministry. At the precise moment that we thought we were actively heading into our ministry, we were asked to be still before God...
I cannot express how difficult it is to have an exciting vision become unclear and powerless. It has put us in a difficult position with fundraising, which has meant we get the added stress of dealing with limited finances through this time (brilliant). It's made things harder for our work with Ethos since we are unclear now what we are working toward. That's definitely not to say we have not been working. We've been working hard through all of this, both actively and joyfully with Ethos (hopefully we've been sharing this well through our newsletters) and on our own in an active state of stillness before God. Not a day has gone by when we have not worked ourselves into a sweat whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually. It has been a long, hard road to work ourselves into this active state of stillness before God. And I think both Jared and I will agree it's probably been the hardest six months of our lives. But, though no decisions have been made yet, we think we are coming close to working our way through to a clear and mighty vision for God's kingdom and our future work.
Here's some things we've worked through and concluded so far:
1. God has been leading us and we've been obediently following his guidance to get us to where we are now. We absolutely trust in what he was doing during our time at HST which led us here. Whether he intends to use this path to renew our vision for the UK or alter it for another work, we're unsure. But whatever we decide we won't feel like we've made the wrong choice or been disobedient to His call either now or in the past few years.
2. We have a heart for lost people and will work in ministry to them. If we don't go to London we will most likely do church planting stateside, probably somewhere in the Northwest.
3. We are working on seeing either decision in a positive light (I can't say we are necessarily there yet). For months we felt stuck in a lose/lose situation. On the one hand we could go to London and have a strenuous work ahead of us, isolated from family, spending years breaking into a proud culture, possibly seeing few results...or on the other hand we could change direction which would seem like starting over, failure, etc. Those negative feelings are not from God, and we have been trying to see both paths as positives. Exciting works for God's kingdom. What wonderful opportunities we have before us.
4. We could not have been in a better position to develop this practice of being still before God. The relationships we have made during this year have been priceless. We are so in love with our friends here and will treasure them our entire lives. Doing kingdom work alongside Ethos has been awesome. We are learning so much and being spiritually fed while watching countless people develop faith. We have learned from past difficulties how to cling to each other in tough times, so our relationship is beautiful. We could not have asked for more precious girls, and we have the joy of a wonderful baby boy on the way. Only through the work of the Holy Spirit can I say through this "agonizing" time, life is good!
5. As hard as it was to try to express how agonizing it can be to be still before God, it is even more difficult to help you understand the amazing things that happen when you learn to stay in that position. I'm just not good enough with words to do it justice. I can stutter out some words that come to mind: power, growth, strength, glory, lessons, peace (aha! there is peace in that phrase!). Through all the little lessons in life, I can name a handful of overarching life lessons that I learned during a phase in my life. One in high school, one in college, etc. I can count 4 of those major lessons from within the last 6 months alone, lessons that would normally take years to learn and meld into my life. Seriously, I could write a book.
6. Not only do good things happen in you when you dwell in the stillness of knowing that he is God, but you invite him to work. You want to know an even better verse about being still before God? Zechariah 2:13 - Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling. Bam! Please tell me you are jumping out of your seat and shouting Hallelujah! at that thought of God rousing himself from his dwelling to be active among us. It sounds absurd to think that we don't already invite God's action, but I can honestly say I didn't fully do that before this time, and I think it's the same for a lot of Christians. Even if it's hard to admit, we limit God and invite him to partial works that fit our ideas (though they can still be awesome and miraculous). It's only natural. People in the bible fell on their face before God's angel in terror. How much more terrifying is it to have God himself come down and work powerfully? Let me just say, whatever decision we make about the future, I cannot wait to share with you what is to come because of the might and majesty of God that will come out of this moment in our lives. Glory to God!
Ethos has blessed us with a weekend away for spiritual renewal and vision casting. Tomorrow we will drop off our kids with some friends and head out to a cabin for two nights. I want to beg some prayers from you over this time. I don't know if we'll come back with a decision about our future work or not, but I trust this is going to be a powerful time in our spiritual and ministerial formation. I'm so excited and can't wait to share more with you about God's work in our lives. I hope each of you will have the (excruciating) opportunity to truly be still before God.
These beautiful words have become ubiquitous in our Christian circles, but in the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means." (Hey, what kind of a blogger would I be if I didn't quote the most quotable movie of all time?). We use it to create a state of peacefulness. Who can help but take a refreshing breath while a lazy smile creeps onto his/her face after hearing these charming words? It's used as a stress reliever in our overly busy lives. How convenient for us. We even have a beautiful song using those words, the tune of which exudes peacefulness. What a joy-filled, peace-inducing phrase. Right? I don't think so.
Being still is the hardest work you will ever do. Not a physical stillness, but a stillness that demands the inactivity of pride, a stillness before God that truly gives Him all authority, exaltation, and permission to work mightily as only the God of the universe can and as He wills. Glory! It may be somewhat easy to say, and to even shout 'Hallelujah!' after, but it is agonizing to do.
This post is going to be personal and raw for us, because this has been our life, our work, and our ministry for the past six months. Stillness. Stillness before God. I'm letting out a sigh right now, not a sigh of pleasant peace, but a sigh over the (hopefully) nearly completed hard work done in us during this time of stillness before God. I apologize for the length of this post, but since I frequent the blog world only about once a month, you can split it up and read a few paragraphs a week. Then maybe by the time you finish this post I'll have another (shorter) post ready :) It's important for me to write this though 1) so you can know what's going on with us and 2) as a necessary component of this oh-so-wondrous season of being stilled and humbled.
As most of you know we have a strong call to serve God in ministry to this world. We spent our first semester while Jared was at Harding School of Theology in focused prayer for direction in our ministry. From that time on we have been pursuing church planting in London. Our time during grad school was the busiest of our lives. During this time of insanity we saw God walking powerfully before us into work in Europe, opening countless doors since we had no excess energy to spend to help get there ourselves. From an encouraging survey trip in 2011 with clear direction, to wonderful support from White Station CoC and Kairos Church Planting, to friends and connections in the UK, to my schooling through the Uof Leicester... The path was being laid before us. We made the decision to step out on faith and to move our family to Nashville last year in the hopes of getting our last leg of valuable training with Ethos, a 2,000 member, four-year-old church plant working mightily for God in Nashville. After 3 months of a "getting to know you" period, we took on an official role with Ethos and were so excited to be actively en route to London and our future ministry there.
At literally the exact time that we became official planter apprentices with Ethos, we went on our second survey trip to London, and the boom hit. This trip was the opposite of our first survey trip. We dealt with negative feelings, closed doors, the realities of how much we can accomplish as Americans, and much more reserve from the British ministers. This kicked off a time of continually closing doors, uncertainty, and spiritual warfare. Obviously we've been wrestling with so many questions about whether this is God helping us change directions for the future or Satan working to prevent that ministry. At the precise moment that we thought we were actively heading into our ministry, we were asked to be still before God...
I cannot express how difficult it is to have an exciting vision become unclear and powerless. It has put us in a difficult position with fundraising, which has meant we get the added stress of dealing with limited finances through this time (brilliant). It's made things harder for our work with Ethos since we are unclear now what we are working toward. That's definitely not to say we have not been working. We've been working hard through all of this, both actively and joyfully with Ethos (hopefully we've been sharing this well through our newsletters) and on our own in an active state of stillness before God. Not a day has gone by when we have not worked ourselves into a sweat whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually. It has been a long, hard road to work ourselves into this active state of stillness before God. And I think both Jared and I will agree it's probably been the hardest six months of our lives. But, though no decisions have been made yet, we think we are coming close to working our way through to a clear and mighty vision for God's kingdom and our future work.
Here's some things we've worked through and concluded so far:
1. God has been leading us and we've been obediently following his guidance to get us to where we are now. We absolutely trust in what he was doing during our time at HST which led us here. Whether he intends to use this path to renew our vision for the UK or alter it for another work, we're unsure. But whatever we decide we won't feel like we've made the wrong choice or been disobedient to His call either now or in the past few years.
2. We have a heart for lost people and will work in ministry to them. If we don't go to London we will most likely do church planting stateside, probably somewhere in the Northwest.
3. We are working on seeing either decision in a positive light (I can't say we are necessarily there yet). For months we felt stuck in a lose/lose situation. On the one hand we could go to London and have a strenuous work ahead of us, isolated from family, spending years breaking into a proud culture, possibly seeing few results...or on the other hand we could change direction which would seem like starting over, failure, etc. Those negative feelings are not from God, and we have been trying to see both paths as positives. Exciting works for God's kingdom. What wonderful opportunities we have before us.
4. We could not have been in a better position to develop this practice of being still before God. The relationships we have made during this year have been priceless. We are so in love with our friends here and will treasure them our entire lives. Doing kingdom work alongside Ethos has been awesome. We are learning so much and being spiritually fed while watching countless people develop faith. We have learned from past difficulties how to cling to each other in tough times, so our relationship is beautiful. We could not have asked for more precious girls, and we have the joy of a wonderful baby boy on the way. Only through the work of the Holy Spirit can I say through this "agonizing" time, life is good!
5. As hard as it was to try to express how agonizing it can be to be still before God, it is even more difficult to help you understand the amazing things that happen when you learn to stay in that position. I'm just not good enough with words to do it justice. I can stutter out some words that come to mind: power, growth, strength, glory, lessons, peace (aha! there is peace in that phrase!). Through all the little lessons in life, I can name a handful of overarching life lessons that I learned during a phase in my life. One in high school, one in college, etc. I can count 4 of those major lessons from within the last 6 months alone, lessons that would normally take years to learn and meld into my life. Seriously, I could write a book.
6. Not only do good things happen in you when you dwell in the stillness of knowing that he is God, but you invite him to work. You want to know an even better verse about being still before God? Zechariah 2:13 - Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling. Bam! Please tell me you are jumping out of your seat and shouting Hallelujah! at that thought of God rousing himself from his dwelling to be active among us. It sounds absurd to think that we don't already invite God's action, but I can honestly say I didn't fully do that before this time, and I think it's the same for a lot of Christians. Even if it's hard to admit, we limit God and invite him to partial works that fit our ideas (though they can still be awesome and miraculous). It's only natural. People in the bible fell on their face before God's angel in terror. How much more terrifying is it to have God himself come down and work powerfully? Let me just say, whatever decision we make about the future, I cannot wait to share with you what is to come because of the might and majesty of God that will come out of this moment in our lives. Glory to God!
Ethos has blessed us with a weekend away for spiritual renewal and vision casting. Tomorrow we will drop off our kids with some friends and head out to a cabin for two nights. I want to beg some prayers from you over this time. I don't know if we'll come back with a decision about our future work or not, but I trust this is going to be a powerful time in our spiritual and ministerial formation. I'm so excited and can't wait to share more with you about God's work in our lives. I hope each of you will have the (excruciating) opportunity to truly be still before God.
