Seeking and Finding

So, I've decided that my best approach at this point is going to be to use this post to give a synopsis of the remaining events of our Saturday, and then spend some posts reflecting on some of the things that I personally took away from the experience. There was so much that was shared and heard, etc by everyone that I couldn't do it justice, and would likely wind up misrepresenting some other folks.

Anyhow, after the experience we had talking about how we had all heard from God, we began to transition into our primary purpose for the day, and that was... hearing from God. First we started with a "practice session", as suggested by my mentor Joe. Now, it seems a bit silly to talk about "practicing" hearing from God - what we were really doing was spending some time listening regarding something that was not the central topic of our time.

A technique that Joe recommended to faciliate a time of listening to God was to use a Scripture, describe the scene and read through the Scripture, having folks imagine themselves in the scene, and then using that to focus them on a picture of Christ as they seek to listen. That is what we did for our "practice" session, and I (at Joe's suggestion) used the story of Jesus and the little children, as appears throughout the gospels (I think I used the Mark account, but it's not really that important). We spent some time listening in that picture/scene, and then got together and shared. It was pretty clear that God was really ready to speak as we listened. Having had our "practice" session, we had a bit longer session on our topic du jour (what God's purpose of CrossWalk is), and then had our no-lunch lunch break.

While we were on our break, and many of us took a beach walk in like 40 degree sunshine, perhaps the most pivotal event of the weekend happened. One of our members got word that his niece had overdosed overnight, and was in the hospital with a less than stellar prognosis. As we reconnected, he shared this with us, and that they were getting ready to do dialysis, etc, etc. Of course, we prayed, and then we went into a time of worship in preparation for our afternoon session. As we were finishing up our singing, he got a call that whatever blood level (bad) they were monitoring regarding the decision for dialysis, etc (I'm not a whiz on the technicalities of what happened). had significantly dropped, and things were looking much better. More excitement.

For our final time of listening to God, I took a cue from something I heard sensed earlier in the day, and the verse I had done my devotional on back on Thursday, and we went into the Last Supper scene, to the point of John 14:12 ("I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing, he will do even greater things..."), and asked God what great things He had for each of us to do for His kingdom. Another great time of sharing and hearing from God followed. By the end of our time, it was clear that God had spoken to each person individually at least once during the day. So much more than I had hoped and imagined when dreaming of the retreat. (Hey, that sounds familiar.)

We closed our formal time by breaking our fast with communion - and let's just say we did it with a bit more than wafers and the little communion glasses :-) It was just a very special way to seal our time.

On the lighter side of things, the next order of business was to REALLY break our fast, and so it was off to Outback Steakhouse, where we wound up having to endure about a 25 minute wait before even getting a table. We had had menus at our disposal while waiting, so when the waitress came the first time, we ordered drinks, appeitizers, and our meals all at once. I really would have liked to have heard our servers honest opinions about what she witnessed at our tables in terms of our eating, because we were so ridiculously ravenous, and just inhaled a good portion of the meal. I'm sure we had to have been quite a sight. The rest of our evening was about relaxation and enjoying each other's company, and then we headed home on Sunday morning.

So, there's the story (although there's one final follow-up piece I'll hit when I'm reflecting on the lessons), and next, I'll start the good stuff - what did all mean, what did I learn, etc, etc.

Hearing from God

I must apologize for how sporadic I've been at continuing my retreat story. There's been a good bit going on with me lately (not busyness persay, but just stuff), much of it along the lines of the kinds of things I'll be sharing about the retreat, and all very good. If I can ever get all caught up, it will make for a pretty awesome collection. But anyhow, back to the story...

So, our team made it to Ocean City, NJ for the retreat, absent on the trip down (and altogether, really) the messy weather that the doom and gloom (and constantly wrong this year) weather forecasters had said would meet us. As is typical when we do a retreat at this location, we got in around 8:30-9. We had our first (and only major) glitch of the weekend when we found out that the realtor had forgotten to leave us the key to the 2nd condo we had rented. Fortunately we had enough room at the primary place, the 2nd condo was just to make sleeping arrangements a bit better for our married couples.

We basically just unpacked and then chilled for a while before turning in on Friday night. We awoke Saturday morning, and without having to worry about the "chore" of making/getting and eating breakfast, we got right to it. We had a time of worship and then just really spent some serious time praying that God would guide our time, protect us from any interference, help us to focus in on him, etc.

After that, my mentor Joe had suggested that the first order of business when preparing to go into a time of listening to God was to have a discussion about hearing from God, how that happens, various forms, etc. As I had been praying about our time, my sense was that the way that discussion should start was to simply ask everyone to share when the last time they felt they had clearly heard from God was, and how it had happened. Since I had an obvious answer to the question (my experience from the Tuesday before the retreat), I led off.

This time was my first tangible confirmation that God really had something special in store for us that day. A couple of others shared their stories, and then one of our number started to share, and he said that he felt like God had spoke to him even as we were sharing. He shared how as the first few of us had been sharing, he had been struggling with a bad attitude/some unbelief - kind of a "This isn't real, they aren't really hearing from God" sort of mentality (been there, done that myself, many times btw), but then he really felt God's conviction asking him why, if none of this was real, was it being fought against so strongly? Good question, huh? And then another one of the guys said he felt like God had spoke to him even as the first was sharing. Totally awesome! Even in this time of discussion, when we weren't even "trying" to hear from God, he was speaking, and was using the time to clear away some doubt and other obstacles to what He was going to share with us as the day went on.

I had been very excited for the weekend before, but I was totally stoked at this point. God was showing up and proving so faithful!

Feeling a bit charmed...

Okay, so I promise to get on with my retreat story, perhaps even with another entry tonight, but I have to step in with a quick interlude due to today's events...

Long time fans of this blog may remember how I wound up in the 5th row of the Carrie Underwood/Keith Urban concert in Hershey last Valentine's Day. (And if you don't, here's a reminder.) For the quick version, the local country radio station does a radiothon to benefit St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital every year (as do something like 900 country radio stations nationwide in the course of a year). Last year I finally "broke down" and became a "Partner in Hope" (that's St. Jude's term for someone who commits to a minimum monthly donation throughout a year). Like most teleathon/radioathon type events, this one has various incentives to provide extra enticement for people who might want to give. The incentive during the hour I gave last year was to be entered in a drawing to win tickets in the 5th through 1st row at the concert, and I won the 5th row seats.

Well, fast forward to today, and it was radioathon time again. I've since decided that St. Jude's will be my charity of choice (outside of my commitments to giving to missions work), and so I was planning on re-upping as a "Partner in Hope" for this year. Having already made the choice to give again, I decided to wait a bit to see if there were any incentives I found particularly interesting. The incentive for the 1 pm hour caught my attention - being entered into a drawing to win a guitar autographed by Brad Paisley. I'm guessing that you've deduced by now that I wouldn't be telling this story if I hadn't won, and you're right. I was pretty stunned when they read my name again this year, especially since they had just read it about 10 minutes earlier, as one of the handful of those who signed on as Partners in Hope that they thanked by name over the air. (I had been listening most of the day, and I think they'd gone to the pile for names maybe 3 times, for a total of 8 to 10 people, but they did it like 2 minutes after I got off the phone after calling in my donation)

So, I guess you could say I'm feeling a bit charmed at the moment. I'd go play the lottery, but I actually think there's something else at work here, which is why there may be a Part 2 to this story coming at some point...

Getting back to it

Whoops. Definitely did not mean to take such a long break in my storytelling. Oh well, I'm back. This entry will be the last piece of the background, and then we'll actually get to the retreat itself.

Back in the beginning of December, my pastor put out a call to the church for people to contribute devotional writings on the theme "Breaking Free" for a book that we will use as a church for the 40 days of Lent. I'm not generally a fan of packaged devotional programs, but I have to say, I thought having a devotional that was created entirely from the church body was one of the coolest ideas ever, and being a writer, I quickly said yes. The due date for the entries was the Sunday of the retreat. I procrastinated for the first month, and then after the new year, was geninuely trying to get the thing written, but coming up blank on inspiration, until the day before we left for the retreat, when God led me to John 14:12 and I wrote the following:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” – John 14:12

At first glance, you may wonder what connection that verse has with the theme of breaking free. Allow me to explain: For me, the transformational reality of my recent life has been my ability to break free from the prison of my own low expectations.

You see, for me, it was always very easy to believe that God was capable of doing incredible things, even beyond all I could ask or imagine, as we’re told in Ephesians. Where it broke down for me was in my willingness to believe that God could use me to do those things. I resigned myself to a fairly trivial experience in terms of my relationship with God, and you could see that in the way I spoke about myself, both to myself and to others – “I’m not really someone who hears from God.” “I’m not an intercessor.” “I’m not…” – you get the picture. And, of course, I was right – not because that was the way things had to be, but because it was how I expected them to be. These were all self-fulfilling prophecies that limited the extent to which God could work in my life. God couldn’t speak to me, because since I didn’t expect to hear from Him, I didn’t listen. God couldn’t use me as an intercessor, because since I didn’t think I could do it, I didn’t try. The list goes on, but I’m working within a space limit here so I’ll leave it at that. Suffice to say I wasn’t really buying the notion that God could do the same things, and even greater, things through me that Jesus did.

However, the thing that jumps off the page to me about this verse is that Jesus gives no disclaimers or qualifications – it very clearly applies to anyone who has faith in Him. Guess what? I’m anyone! And so are you. The question is, do we believe it, and more importantly, do we live like we believe it? When we seek Him, do we expect to find Him? When we pray, do we expect to see answers? When we listen, do we expect Him to speak? Do we expect God to do great things through us?

Our honest answers to these questions will largely define the extent to which God is able to work in us and through us. As I’ve been able to truthfully answer “Yes” to more of those questions in my own life, I’ve begun to find Him more, see more answers, hear Him more, and so forth. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?


PS: As a side story, apparently not everyone fulfilled their commitments to write, and we wound up short of 40 entries, so at my pastor's request, I'm now on the hook to write the devotional for Easter Sunday. No pressure there, right? :-)

Letting God fill in the gaps

One of the lessons God taught me through the retreat experience, before we even got to the retreat, was that of his ability to fill in the gaps of my inadequacy, assuming that I'm following his plan.

In my last entry, I mentioned an "e-prayer" I got from one of the other core team members shortly after my Tuesday evening touch from God. Turned out that my prayer request ended up sparking an awesome "e-prayer" meeting on our core team's discussion group, with virtually everyone chiming in. It was pretty awesome, in that it became very clear that our hearts were being focused on what God had in mind for us, and that God was using what had been meant for evil to bring good about, both in my life and for our team.

However. what also grew out of that prayer time was the revelation that about half of the team was (or at least had been) down on the plan to fast during the retreat. You see, we had a number of first time fasters, and so there was not much in the way of an understand of what we were doing, and what the purpose was for it. And, retrospectively, I never really talked about that with the team.

The reason for that was rather simple - I first fasted when I was a teenager in youth group, and have fasted many times since. I won't say that fasting is easy for me, but it's not a big deal for me at all. I've been through it, seen how God has used it, not had any really bad experiences, etc. At this point in my life, if I'm feeling led to fast, or if someone else ask me to join them in fasting for something, its just something I do and don't think a whole lot about. Since it wasn't a big deal to me, I didn't really anticipate it being a big deal for anyone else. Of course, it was easy for me to forget that the first time I did it, it was a big deal. So, not having a serious conversation with the team about it was a significant oversight on my part, one which left unaddressed could have really de-railed the trip.

Fortunately, as I've said, God is more than happy to fill in the gaps for our inadequacy when we're walking in his will. What also came out in that "prayer meeting", and the following discussion, was the extent to which God had already been working on those who confessed to having bad attitudes. That, coupled with a bit of follow-up on my part, created a much different dynamic than I might have otherwise expected under the circumstances. I won't say I had the most enthusiastic group of fasters ever, but I had a very obediant (to God, not to me) group, and as I'm learning more and more these days, that's really all that counts in the grand scheme of things.

Facing opposition

My week did NOT get off to a good start last week, and trouble started on the evening of the first day of the week, that being Sunday. In the way of background, I have a friend who I serve as kind of a mentor for. I won't go into a ton of detail here, but suffice to say he has some special needs that present some unique challenges and require patience, which I sometimes run short on, though I've learned more than I ever had before as a result of our relationship. I love him dearly, but he be extremely frustrating at times, and Sunday night was one of those times. We had gotten together for what I thought was a really good conversation on Saturday, and what did he do as soon as he saw me at CrossWalk on Sunday night, but come over and do exactly what we had spent a good part of that conversation talking about not doing. Later in the service he did something else that we've been over again and again. He topped it off after the service by coming over and interrupting a conversation I was having to tell me that the Eagles had won, something I had told him (and everyone else) I didn't want to know, since I was DVRing the end of the game to watch when I got home. I totally lost my patience and blew up at him. And of course, me being me, I felt absolutely terrible about that later. So that was how I went into my work week.

And then there was Monday and Tuesday. Have you ever one of those times where for a stretch of a couple days, it just seems like every little stupid thing that can go wrong and frustrate you does? Nothing big and earth shattering, just a long string of small things. Well, that was basically my first two days of the work week. There was a personal issue here, a logistical issue there, etc, etc. And of course, when you become frustrated and distracted, you start compounding the problem by doing stupid stuff yourself, like getting halfway between your building and the parking garage and remembering you don't have any cash and that's all the parking garage takes. (Bear in mind, the only reason I was parked in the garage that day was because they had started working on the road I usually take to get the bus and the required detour meant I missed the bus) Anyhow, by the end of the work day on Tuesday, I found myself just feeling totally overwhelmed with frustration. I was staring blankly at my computer monitor, blinking back tears, and like I said, for no real major reason.

As I was reflecting on this on my walk halfway to the parking garage, and then back to my building and the ATM, and then onto the parking garage again, it struck me that the timing of this was somewhat suspect. Now, I believe there is an enemy who does attack, but I tend to not be one who is looking for the devil behind every stumble, struggle, or misstep. However, given what I was preparing for in the coming weekend and the convergence of everything, I really got the sense I was being hit with some opposition. Now, this realization was satisfying on one level, because I saw it as confirmation that God had something in mind for this weekend. It was, however, not very pleasant to live through. So, when I got home, I called Joe and asked for his prayers, and sent out an e-mail to the rest of the core team asking for the same. I also spent some time praying.

Later in the evening, I had transitioned from prayer to really just listening and waiting on God. Now, I've said before that I didn't used to think of myself as someone who heard from God very often. That attitude has since changed, but it would be factually correct to say that, to this point in my life, I haven't been someone who has seen visions from God. Well, I'm here to tell you that I saw a vision last Tuesday night. And it was totally out of left field relative to where my mind was at the time, so I'm sure it was God :-) I saw a hand appear and reach down into my chest. I suddenly became very, very aware of my heartbeat, and the words of Ezekial 36:26 came to my mind (well, I didn't know the reference at the time, but I knew the quote): "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Whoa. I'm pretty sure I still haven't come to understand everything that happened in that time. However, at that moment, I felt a real release from everything that had been weighing me down over the last 48 hours or so. A few minutes later, there was a *ding* from my computer announcing the arrival of an e-mail from one of the other core team members in response to my prayer request, in which he had written an "e-prayer" (more on e-prayers in a future entry) that he had to have been praying right as I was in that moment with God. Pretty wild. Whatever lingering frustration or heaviness I may have had was later completely erased by what was easily the best and most refreshing night of sleep I had had in a long time.

It would be nice to say that I got up the next day and just floated through an incredible end of the week, but that wouldn't be true. The rest of the week was pretty much just a typical week. However, my anticipation for what God was up to was only growing as we got closer to the weekend .

Laying the foundation

So, the idea for this past weekend's retreat was born in the late summer, and it was put on the calendar at some point around September/October, without a whole lot more thought about it for a month or so. Somewhere in there I felt the additional sense that we needed to fast as a team through our prayer and seeking time, and I put that word out to the team as well.

(Note - this is going to be one of those jumps that might not seem to make sense for a bit, but I promise I'll bring it back around, perhaps even by the end of this post)

Due to some issues I had been wrestling with in my own life for a while, I had told my pastor at some point in this timeframe that I really felt I needed to find a spiritual mentor to provide me with accountabilty and to really hold my feet to the fire and spur me in my relationship with God. Nothing had happened with that, until a Sunday evening toward the end of November. We had a special speaker at CrossWalk that night, and I really felt God saying that I needed to follow through with that idea. So, I pulled my pastor aside after the service to discuss it. He brought up Joe, the man from the couple I mentioned in my previous post. I didn't really know Joe a whole lot, and kind of thought it wouldn't be a particularly natural fit, but I was also intrigued by the idea, so I agreed to get together with him and see how it would go. We setup a meeting for the first Monday in December, but with the Thanksgiving holiday in between, Joe actually forgot and didn't show up that first night, so we postponed for the following Monday.

In the interim, we had our December Core Team meeting, which was going to be our last "business" meeting prior to the retreat. Because of all the various things I mentioned in my background post, we were facing some very significant decisions and so forth regarding our direction. Up until this point, I had been selling the retreat as a time where we would have nothing on the agenda but praying and listening to God, and processing what we heard Him saying. However, at this meeting, I got a bit spooked, and that, coupled with some suggestion by our team that we really needed to discuss a few things, led me to start creating an agenda for the retreat.

Back to Joe - we met the following Monday, and without me even bringing up the retreat or anything about it, our conversation led me to process the decision I had made the prior week, and determine that I needed to hold onto what I believed God had originally laid on my heart. I shared this with Joe and he affirmed that course of action, if that was what I really believed was the vision God had given me, and it was. I pulled my pastor aside at the next opportunity and let him know I was taking those items we had put on the agenda back off, and that they would only come out if we weren't getting anywhere listening to God, or if that was how we sensed God leading. At the time, Joe's missing of our first meeting was an annoyance to me and an embarrassment to Joe, but I really believe that God used it, because had we met before that core team meeting, I think there's a very good chance I would have made the change of plans and then never looked back. Joe did agree to be my mentor, but due to the holidays and some other complications, we haven't had a formal meeting since then, though we've had a number of conversations.

As it was, I was left my original vision, which was was something that, not only had I never led before, I had never really even been involved in something like this. How in the world do you spend an entire morning and afternoon (that was the schedule I had in mind) listening to God while staying focused, without falling asleep, etc? Re-enter Joe, as this was an area of his expertise. I tapped his experience and together we put together a framework for our time.

That pretty much brings us up to the week before the retreat, the story of which will start the Sunday before the retreat.

Some background...

Okay, so before I get into the story of my retreat this past weekend, I need to lay some groundwork, starting with some disclaimers.

First of all, this will be a series of posts, much like my reflections from Thailand, though possibly not as long. I will, however, be laying this out over several days, simply because there's way too much for a post of civilized length.

Secondly, the full story goes back across about 6 weeks, and contains a number of moving parts. So, if it seems like there's a bit of jumpiness from one post to the next for a while, it's probably because there is. I promise to bring everything back together in the end, or at least to try really hard to do so!

And now, for some background. For those who don't know, or who do know but forgot, I attend CrossWalk Community, more typically referred to simply as CrossWalk. CrossWalk is a satellite congregation of the Mechanicsburg Brethren in Christ Church (better known as McBIC), which has been my home church for the last decade. What does that mean? Well, we're not totally sure we know either, but here are the particulars. We meet on Sunday evenings in the McBIC building. Our pastor is on the McBIC staff (also has duties with young adult ministry in general). If you become a member at CrossWalk, you're a member of McBIC. However, we do church a bit differently at CrossWalk. Rather than sitting in rows of chairs, we meet around tables. Instead of a sermon where only the pastor speaks and everyone else listens, we have time for discussion around our tables, and often have discussions with the whole group. The service was started with the goal to reach young adults, and also those who aren't comfortable in a traditional church setting.

CrossWalk launched over 3 years ago at the end of September in 2005, and got off to a fast start. For the first year to 18 months, we were averaging about 100 people on a given Sunday night, and seeing lots of spiritual fruit in the way off people coming to Christ and others who had been with Christ but been away coming back and rededicating their lives. It was a very, very exciting time. Then, as the newness started to wear off and our opening round of momentum faded, we started to see attendance dip, but were still seeing a great amount of life change. Not too long after our 2nd anniversary, we really started to struggle in a lot of ways, and 2008 in general was just a very tough year. Attendance really fell off and we just weren't seeing nearly the amount of fruit that we had before, though there were still some great stories.

I was on the original launch team for CrossWalk, and have served on the "core team" for probably 2+ years, though I don't remember exactly when I joined. Since summer 2007, I've been in leadership of that team. What is the core team, you ask? Well, that's a really good question, as it's really been evolving from the get go. The beauty of having a small church underneath a larger church is that we don't have to deal with much in the way of formal structure and governance, so we can be very flexible in trying to figure out what works, and we have been doing that almost from the beginning. However, the best description for the core team would be a church board/deacon board hybrid. It's a group of key lay leaders, along with our pastor, who serve to set direction and provide oversight to CrossWalk. My leadership role on that team, until recently, has mainly been administrative in nature - I would call the meetings, run them, follow up on things we decided, etc.

One of the encouraging things that we saw happening in the midst of some tough times at CrossWalk was a number of gifted leaders migrate towards CrossWalk from the standard McBIC service - including a couple who had been with CrossWalk at launch, but had soon migrated back to McBIC for a variety of reasons. Their return coincided with a stated new emphasis on prayer, as that was something that they were very passionate about and gifted in. He, in particular, took a significant role in encouraging us as a core team, and as a congregation at large, to put a stronger emphasis on really seeking God first, rather than trying to plan and figure our way out of things and then ask God to bless our plans.

One of the immediate results of this was that prayer, which had at first consisted of the standard opening "God bless our meeting" prayer, and then moved to some significant dedicated time at the end of meetings, became the first order of business at our core team meetings, and a place we went back to throughout. As this was going on, I was processing the idea of the Core Team retreat. Our pastor has family connections to a condo in Ocean City, NJ, which means we have a very low cost place to go for a winter getaway. Last January we had gone there, schemed and planned for a weekend, came back with a nifty little program that got everyone excited for a few weeks/months, and then disappeared. As I thought through doing a retreat again, I really felt like we needed to do one, but this time sensing God saying that we should keep the focus on prayer, and on really listening to Him regarding His plans and desires for CrossWalk were.

So, there's how this weekend's retreat was born. Tomorrow, onto some of the runup to the retreat...

Took me long enough...

Wow, 11 days into 2009 without a post. I've really been slacking.

Anyhow, this is just the blog equivalent of a "bump" (for the uninitated, bump = "bring up my post" and is a post that serves no other purpose than to move a topic to the top of message board by giving it the most recent post), because while I don't have the time or strength to get into it tonight, there will likely be some significant posting coming tonight. I was on a retreat this weekend with the "core team" from my church. In fact, I led the weekend. The retreat, the events leading up to it, and the aftermath were/have been exceedingly significant for me personally, and I believe for our church, and so I really feel like I need to lay them out and also use the blog to more fully process them myself.