Jam'n with Jesus

Sometime I wonder where God is; that He's far off somewhere and we mere mortals are left to fend for ourselves. And then there are times where I marvel at how God uses his kids to touch people's lives. Like tonight for instance. Being Valentine's Day, and having the night off for a change (I have a regular bus run every Thursday evening), I decided to take Angel out on a date. We went to the Second Cup on Baseline Road in Sherwood Park, and we had a great conversation over coffee, hot cider & desert. As we were thinking about leaving, a guy comes in with a guitar & amp. We'll call him R.T. He needed the spot where we were sitting to do his gig, and promising to be ready in a few minutes we decided to stick around & hear him play. Well the few minutes stretched out for about 20 or so (it may have had something to do with not one but two G strings on his guitar breaking). During this time, as we sat across from him, we struck up a conversation. He asked us what kind of music we liked and one of the many genres we mentioned was Christian music.

This led to a discussion on spirituality and religion, and although R.T. didn't have any firm beliefs on the subject he was what I would call a seeker. During our conversation a friend of R.T's joined him. I feel badly for already having forgotten this lovely woman's name who was R.T.'s backup singer, and as it happened we found out in conversation with her that she was a pastor's wife, and had done missions in Brazil for 13 years. All this time R.T. was having trouble with his G string (we all though that sounded funny), so he began his gig without it. Having some knowledge of what music we listen to, he started off with Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" followed by Bob Dylan's "You Gotta Serve Somebody." R.T. has amazing talent, which was evident by how he sang and played with only five strings on his guitar. It was the highlight of the evening and we couldn't have had a better date, thanks to the talent of this man who we were delighted to make our acquaintance with.

I don't know why, but as we were listening to R.T. perform I got thinking, "God, what do you want to say to this guy?" And then I sensed God giving me words for R.T., which I wrote down as he played. When he finished playing he asked me if I had some correspondence for him. I gave him what I wrote and I said to him, "I just wanted to say that you have amazing talent and are gifted with music; thanks for making our Valentine's date special. I don't think our meeting was coincidence, and I know this is going to sound weird but I believe God has a lot of things He want to say to you. But tonight I sense God saying to you that He has blessed you with a gift of music, that Jesus wants to jam with you and that He wants to make music out of your life for Him."

R.T.'s response was enthusiastic and transparent. He greatly appreciated hearing such encouraging words from just an ordinary guy and not a "priest", told us about how he struggled with finding acceptance in society as an artist and his legal battles with his ex-wife (actually I think he said his two ex-wives but I'm not sure here). He especially liked the part about "jam'n with Jesus." I added that God is many things; one of them is that He is an artist and that He has deposited that part of Himself into his life. After saying our goodbyes we parted with a sense of having a divine appointment with R.T. and his friend, who just happened to be a follower of Jesus, on a night that I just happen to have off from work. I don't know what the end result of this encounter with R.T. will be, but it's my hope and prayer that it'll end with R.T. being more than a seeker; that by becoming a follower he'll be doing some jam'n with Jesus.

Uncharted waters

For several months now I’ve been giving some serious thought & prayer about the direction I’m headed in life. This has been something that's been building and building to the point where I guess it can be said I’m facing a crisis of faith. No I’m not talking about the Dawkins challenge, so you can breathe a sigh of relief (or if you happen to be an atheist you can despair over my so-called delusion). Ironically I found Dawkin’s book just reinforced my thinking about God’s existence. But that’s another post. What I’m talking about is the pursuit of church leadership and vocational ministry. It’s complicated, and for reasons I can’t easily explain or rather not go into great detail for the whole World Wide Web to see I’ve decided to leave the leadership team at Calvary and put my pursuit of becoming a pastor on the shelf.

I know that this may come as a surprise to many and I know people will be asking me why. The best way I can sum up why is because I’ve come to a place where I need to lay down my ambitions and dreams before God and let them die. Let me tell you, this is not a pleasant experience; in fact it’s been like the death of a thousand cuts. For various reasons I’ve arrived at a dead end as far as becoming a vocational minister is concerned. But I don’t feel a sense of despair. Yeah, I feel a little sad that I’m no longer an elder in my church; being involved in leadership has taught me a lot about God and myself, and at the time it was supposed to be a stepping stone on the road to becoming a pastor. But I also feel a sense of freedom, partly because church leadership carries a lot of responsibility. But mainly I feel I’m in a place where I can focus on just being God’s child and nothing else. Maybe in all the effort to become something that I may have never been intended to be I lost sight of the simple truth that I am someone special in Jesus’ eyes.

If leadership is truly about character and influence, then my being in a position of leadership is irrelevant. As I said in a previous post, I can still pastor people without having a degree to earn, a sermon to preach or another meeting to attend. If I do have a destiny involving all of these things it will come to me. Right now I’m happy to just sit at the feet of Jesus and soak in His presence, and if others can be drawn closer to Jesus by what I’m doing then maybe that’s how my destiny is being fulfilled. As I was preparing to meet with the elders this week to discuss where I’m at I received what I believe to be a dream from the Lord (how I know this was a dream from God I’ll talk about in another post). What was discerned from the dream is that I’m supposed to embrace my journey of learning to belonging to Jesus and others, to take on Jesus’ character and then from there God will use me to set people free by His power.

So as they say, today is the first day of the rest of your life. I’ve also heard that the day after tomorrow is the second day of the rest of your life (LOL). But seriously, I’m sailing into uncharted waters and while there’s a grieving process of letting go of desires and dreams, there’s also a sense of anticipation. Even though things are now more uncertain than ever I feel a strong sense of love and guidance from God. So for now I’ll let go of the wheel and see where the wind blows.