Category Archives: miracles

storm in a teacup: a call for humble unity in the Church

Posted on by April 24, 2024

We’ve discovered a new love around here: Kid’s coffee. It’s not really coffee – it’s dark herbal tea with a splash of milk – but it looks like coffee and our little guys love it.

Another thing they love is straws. Paper straws, plastic straws, striped straws, spotted straws. But it doesn’t matter how many kinds you offer, you can’t always please a four-year-old.

“No, not that one,” Kav said. “I want my whiskey straw.”

“Your what?!” He doesn’t even know what whiskey is. And no, he can’t read the Irish cookbook yet and I guarantee you he’s never heard of Irish coffee.

“That one!” he pointed. “My whiskey straw!” And there, across the counter, was his green plastic straw, the one that curls around and around…like a whisk.

Ohhhh. It’s not a whiskey straw, it’s a whisk-y straw. Got it.

storm in a teacup: a call for humble unity in the Church

Let’s just hope he doesn’t mention it in his Sunday school class, right? I can just see him walking down the hallway on the way to class with his brother, talking about their red and green whisk-y straws that they got in their goody bags from church last Christmas. Snort. All we need is a visitor overhearing that conversation, and all heck would break loose.

(“Martha! Did you heeear what they gave the children at the church down the road? Ohhh, my goodness gracious…”)

There’s a lot of talk lately about persecution in the Church ramping up, even in America. And it’s true. But ironically, the Church’s biggest threat in the West isn’t from unbelievers right now. That’s on the radar for sure, but it’s still mostly down the road a little ways because that threat is preceded and prepared for by the real one – which is believers who are too quick to run with not enough information, making snap judgments and getting caught up in offense and creating division in their wake.

If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

– Mark 3:24-25

What’s interesting to me about that verse is that it takes place smack in the middle of two events: The first is when Jesus was accused of using demonic power to cast out demons. The second is when He warns against blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, because the scribes did not understand what He was doing and instead of trying to find out, they had accused Him of having an unclean spirit.

This is important to pay attention to because the biggest threat to the Church is its self-inflicted wounds, primarily of legalistic groups coming against Spirit-filled Christians, organizations, leaders, and ministries. The Church needs unity but it has never found it in finger pointing and accusation, spewing hate and vitriol against anyone who challenges their self righteous comfort zone. We must walk in humility and grace toward others, knowing that we don’t know everything.

Do we want to be right, or do we want to be righteous?

Unfamiliarity breeds fear, and fear breeds dissension. Or, as a wise friend of mine put it this week:

Fear, not put into check, creates a very destructive tribalism. There are good parts of tribalism, like team work and sharing like-minded goals, upholding biblical values, etc. When done with maturity, accountability, and balance, there is good fruit. When done out of balance — check lists and qualifiers that produce a “mean girls” atmosphere, like “you can’t sit with us!” — then tribalism can turn into cannibalism. It seems to me the Church is being cannibalized from within and while that has somewhat been an issue for awhile, it has been going atomic since 2020.

— Maggie Montgomery

Do charismatic, Spirit-filled churches do weird things? Yes. Yes, we are weird…and so were those guys in the Bible. Especially Jesus. (Do you take Communion? That’s weird. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, though.)

I am not wildly demonstrative in church – I blame this on my inability to clap in rhythm – but I remember years ago taking a younger friend to a Sunday service and she was aghast that weird people raised their hands during the singing. And this was a conservative, non-denominational church. No speaking in tongues, no healings, no deliverances, no signs and wonders, no loud prayer, no prophetic words…just slightly cringey worship music from the 90s.

It should be noted that all of those things – with the possible exception of slightly cringey music – are totally Biblical. Just because something is unfamiliar to us doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Likewise, just because the enemy has warped or counterfeited something doesn’t mean the real deal is wrong, either.

We have salt lamps in our house and some people think those are New Agey. So, okay, New Agers use salt lamps for whatever reason, but we use them because they really do clean the air (they attract water molecules and the warm salt traps particles of dust, pollen, smoke, etc) and they reduce EMF by neutralizing positive ions in the air. Salt lamps don’t have those virtues because of an evil power, but because God made those combined elements of salt and heat to do that. If we didn’t know about the science and we used salt lamps for some kind of spiritual power outside of Jesus, that’s one thing. But what about lighting a candle in the window and using it as a reminder to pray? Could that be New Agey? Um, maybe, I guess…but it doesn’t have to be.

When I post prophetic words, people could ignorantly interpret that as a Christian version of a tarot card or horoscope. Some people don’t like it; lots of people completely reject the prophetic realm. But we’re going to see the Church awake to signs and wonders like never before — the Bible warned us repeatedly of it — and the big challenge will be, will the Church have faith for it, or will they walk in fear, afraid to leave the familiar? Will they worship the systems they know instead of the One they claim to know? This has always been the question; it’s why the rich man went away from Jesus grieved. It makes me think of Luke 18:8: When the Lord returns, will He find faith in the earth?

The enemy has counterfeited so many truths that some Christians are afraid of anything that remotely smacks of the mystical or unfamiliar, but there is a lot of mystical and unfamiliar in the Bible. Just because something has been abused or counterfeited doesn’t mean the real thing has lost its validity.

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

– 1 Corinthians 2:1-3

God made science, and all truth is God’s truth. Science is catching up to a lot of truths and proving them all the time. But also, we need to stop fearing and condemning things we don’t understand. Not everything can be explained by science, and people of faith shouldn’t need it to be. And we definitely shouldn’t be too trigger-happy in condemning practices we don’t personally participate in when they’re not blatantly unbiblical.

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

– 1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Here’s the nicest way I can say this: When we walk in ignorance, pride, and fear, we freak out over the dumbest stuff. And that plays right into the enemy’s hands. Church, we need to calm down and stop doing that.

I was asked this week on social media to share my position on a particular tempest in a teapot I’d never heard of, but the gist, as I discovered, was a new witch hunt against Spirit-filled churches. And for the curious, here’s my position on these types of things: I do not get involved in non-essential controversies. I don’t argue with people about Harry Potter, or The Shack, or medical marijuana. They’re such civilian matters. Whenever we are nitpicking someone else’s faith and doctrine we are putting our eyes on the wrong person.

What can you ever really know of other people’s souls – of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

What is the fruit of these ministries, on both sides? I have never yet met a person who has accused a Spirit-filled church or pastor of whatever they disagree about doctrinally who has actually listened to their sermons. I have only encountered people who have taken clips out of context and soundbites from anti-charismatic websites. What is the fruit, though? The fruit from most of these charismatic churches is pretty good: healings, wholeness, deliverance, people coming to know Jesus, people maturing in the Word, people obeying Him in radical ways, and beautiful communities. The fruit from these other groups is dissension, division, pride, self-righteousness, confusion, and accusation. So-called “ministries” have no ministry at all if they are doing the enemy’s work of accusing the brethren. You will know them by their fruits…and that makes this kind of situation pretty obvious.

In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity. That’s my position.

I think more and more will continue to come out that separates legalistic, comfort zone Church-ianity from Biblical, Spirit-filled abiding and practice. Wisdom is reserved for those who will not be tripped up by the spirit of offense. Offense and discernment are not the same thing and you will know them by their fruit.

The Lord is about to do something huge all over the place that will make the revival in Asbury look like the calm before the storm. But the enemy is frantically trying to subvert, delay, sabotage, and discourage us into thinking it’s not possible for us in this time. How do we fight back? How do we prepare the way? With unity, humility, grace, and our eyes on Jesus, not each other.

We’re not just capable of this kind of unity, we’re made for it. Do you remember the days shortly after 9/11? Here’s how Eric Metaxas describes them:

When you passed someone on the strangely empty and quiet streets, as we did, pushing our daughter in her stroller, you wondered if you were together at the end of the world. You exchanged glances that seemed to say: Yes, we are in this together. We don’t know you, but because of this tragedy we feel close to you. We are living through this together, and who knows what lies ahead?

– Eric Metaxas, If You Can Keep It

Are we ready for something like that again? Not if our favorite sport in the Church is friendly fire. But we can be. We are stewards of the mysteries of grace. We serve the One who’s already won, and we are on the same side, in this together. We just need to act like it.

it’s not about your feelings: a kindling post

Posted on by April 6, 2023

A word (or several) for the friend who’s been feeling defeated:

Tomorrow has not defeated you already. Today and yesterday didn’t defeat you, either.

Your regrets have not defeated you.

Here’s why:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

— Romans 8:35-37

…and…

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

— Romans 8:1

it's not about your feelings: a kindling post

You’ve worked and worked for nothing, it seems. It feels like nothing has come of it, and you’re afraid that people see your incompletion. You feel alone and like you’ve failed; you feel seen but in the wrong ways because what’s incomplete is obvious and what’s been going on under the surface is not.

You’ve been afraid that you stand out in the worst ways and don’t fit in anywhere.

Here’s the truth, though (because our feelings can be liars, easily manipulated by the enemy):

You’re not incomplete, and you’re not a failure. You’re just not done yet. Get back to work and finish.

Yes, it feels like too much, like it’s too hard and there’s too far to go. But God has created a wrinkle in the path to shorten the distance for you. Start walking and watch what happens. You haven’t gone too far in the wrong direction to turn back. Completion, forgiveness, repentance, and redemption are fast.

God sees you and has prepared a tribe for you. You are not standing out in the worst ways; you are a missing piece they’ve needed that fits perfectly in the space that’s waiting for you. Reach for the thing you know is there, even if you can’t see it yet.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

— Ephesians 2:4-10

It is not a matter of feelings. Our feelings are devious; high tide and low tide. They try to be the boss but they often have no idea what the big picture is because they tend to cloud over some really important facts.

Romans 8 is a really good place to camp out right now to get those facts. So is Psalm 46. So are a lot of places.

Run to the Word and know the Lord is moving. We can trust Him.

And another thing (this is me coming back to finish the argument after slamming the door) – just because things look bleak and hopeless doesn’t mean they are. How many times in stories or history or the Bible have you seen everything look like all is lost, only to turn out better than you would’ve imagined?

The Cross and the Resurrection.

Haman’s attack, and Esther’s favor.

The Battle of Little Round Top.

The Battle of Trenton.

Gandalf and the Balrog.

Aslan and the White Witch.

Omaha Beach.

The Lord is not done in your situation, either.

Some things will be worse than you expect, true. But that’s no reason to dread them or lose hope, because some things will also be better.

Dread and pessimism are flimsy weapons. Hope-grounded faith is undefeated.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water;

in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

— Isaiah 35:5-7

That breakthrough you’re working for seems so far away and impossible. It seems like by the time you get there, it might be too late.

But it’s not, and it won’t be. You are not running out of time when you are waiting for God’s perfect timing.

And in His mercy, He often gives us no choice but to wait. He knows what’s good for us, and He knows we might sacrifice the good for the easy when we start to feel desperate.

So He gives us a million choices except this one — He doesn’t let us choose the timing. It’s almost like He can work with all kinds of our fumbling and learning and risking and trying again, and He’s not afraid of our failures because when they are rooted in obedience they are actually successes, even though it may not look that way to us in the moment.

He can work with all of our imperfect efforts, but He alone holds the timing for completion.

He’s not teasing us with riddles in order to achieve breakthrough.

He’s preparing us to steward the upgrade.

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

— Matthew 6:31-33

Jesus, You’re good. And we trust You. But what is that hymn? “Oh, for grace to trust You more.”

We need that grace. That breakthrough that comes again and rewards us after long, hard waiting and believing and trusting when we cannot see. We need the grace of victory that only You can achieve; we’ve done everything we know to do and all we have left is to stand.

So we’re standing. Give us the grace to trust You more, so we can shout in triumph, “See, world? I told You He said so and He never fails to come through.”

Here’s the printable version of this post:

its-not-about-your-feelingsDownload

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green light: choosing the wonder and risk of freedom

Posted on by October 19, 2023

Here’s a super fun craft: Take clear contact paper, cut it into dozens of hearts, and stick tiny squares of colored tissue paper to them. Hang them in the window. Gorgeous and simple, right?

It is, it really is. As long as you get someone else to remove the backing of the *&#%^!@ contact paper.

How do I know this? I spent the greater part of a church service recently peeling off these filmy contact paper backings in the preschool class and almost lost my Sunday School card. Turns out it requires intercession, praying in tongues, and friction. And not just that, because you can apply all three at once, right away, and it still takes a certain amount of time for the backing to release itself enough that you can gain purchase on the tiniest amount of paper real estate between your fingers to finally peel that sucker off.

YAY. “What are we learning about today, kids? Patience and sanctification.”

green light: choosing the wonder and risk of freedom

This has been the name of the game for years now. We went through another round of testing last week for one of our kids and a new report arrived in my email; some of the results were no surprise but others threw me for a loop. Conclusions were repeatedly “borderline,” “low,” and “extremely low,” and I reminded myself that this wasn’t an evaluation of my parenting, or our efforts, or our homeschooling, or our family. This was an evaluation of one child’s cognitive ability and special needs. It’s not the final word, it’s a hoop to jump through so we can take the next step.

I reminded myself of something I learned long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when I worked with other kids who had special needs: No one is as bad as their diagnoses. And that’s comforting because there are all these numbers here: Percentile Rank 5, Percentile Rank 2, Percentile Rank .1…as in, one tenth.

Those first few years matter for children. Those 40 weeks in utero matter, too – the environment, the mother’s health and wholeness, the atmosphere she lives in. But then the birth, and infancy, and toddlerhood, and all those milestones: Kids learn to roll and crawl and walk while the brain lays down tracks with synapses and dendrites, creating an expanding atlas of highways and thoroughfares with every healthy relationship and interaction. Days of wholeness create whole new countries filled with possibilities, and the passport is built in the brain to take them everywhere those neurons can reach.

But when those tracks have been derailed, tangled for the first several years through trauma and neglect, the map is much more limited. The green lights are fewer; the behaviors and deficiencies confine the borders with red lights everywhere.

I cannot quite wrap my own brain around what to think of this report. On one side, grief and bewilderment: After a few hours of testing, this paper distills someone I love and have fought so much for down to such small numbers. I wonder what we could’ve or should’ve done to change the test results. I wonder if changing those results would’ve mattered, and realize it wouldn’t. His score is not his destiny, nor is it our appraisal.

So, on the other side is confirmation: This explains so much. No wonder this has been so hard. No wonder so many basic things have been such a battle. We have been trying to navigate this map with him, pushing on the edges of it whenever we felt brave enough to see if they would unroll and expand because we know these roads should go further. At one edge, we try the stoplight and it stays red no matter how long you wait. We go to another corner of the map and the same thing happens. We try another light in a different area and it turns green for a couple seconds, so we push the gas and start to move but the light turns red again before we’ve made it across, and whap, the edge furls tightly and throws us back to staring at the red light, looking in all the other directions, wondering which way to go.

And now we have some answers – not the kind that give you direction, of course, but the kind that explain the difficult terrain a little more. It’s not our road building skills or our map reading abilities. It’s sabotage; the lights are programmed this way.

Or put another way, we’ve been trying to go 40 miles an hour in a vehicle that won’t go past third gear. When you try to drive fast in a low gear, you can only reach a certain speed before more and more effort still doesn’t make you go any faster, it just uses more gas and wears out your engine.

We have seen the map expand here and there in small ways, and this process, too, has required significant intercession, praying in tongues, and friction. And even those aren’t enough, because you can apply all three at the same time and still take forever to gain the tiniest amount of new real estate.

There’s another section of the report that addresses adaptive behavior, and it says, “These scales address what a person actually does, rather than what he or she is able to do.” And this makes sense too; the issue is not so much ability, but willingness to walk in the risk of freedom. The map really is the same size as everyone else’s. The difference is that trauma and neglect in those early years curled the edges up tight to make the space left in the middle small, safe, and predictable.

And after almost eleven years now, I relate to this. We’ve lived with red lights for so long I don’t remember what living in the green light is like, though I know we’re called to do it. In those early years we repeatedly stretched toward freedom, and the aftermath was so severe we learned to be grateful for the small map, too. The edge snapped back so violently that we learned to approach it like an electric fence.

We are intercessors and we pray for healings and miracles. We don’t see them all the time but we do see them frequently and have experienced several ourselves – cysts disappeared, desperate sickness resolved, a hernia requiring surgery healing suddenly on its own. So when we adopted, this is where we were coming from: Yes, there would be challenges, but also yes, God is a healer and He wants to heal.

One of our pastors said recently that we, as burning ones, carry God’s fire and spread it to others – but also, we could go somewhere incredibly wet and have our own fire quenched. And when he said that, something inside me started to make sense.

Yes, Andrey and Reagan have been healed of so much. But also, we had no idea the depth of healing they needed or that the process of redemption would require even more layers of healing for our entire family. We were ablaze but a fire hose went off in the middle of us, and it took years to turn that thing off. By the time we did, there was still a ring of fire around our perimeter but the inside was filled with dripping, blackened coals. We’ve been drying out for years.

What I’m confessing here is that it’s easy for me to believe God’s miracles for you and others – I can even believe Him for a lot of miracles for myself and my family – but in this hardest area I have struggled with a soggy faith. We’ve contended for healing for our kids and their special needs (which are extensive, complicated, and often invisible to non-family members), but we’ve also lived with the red lights for years, the consequences of childhood trauma and the effects of it right in our faces on a daily basis.

We’re made to go places, though. We’re made to go past third gear.

You might have a situation like this, too – something that has restricted and held you back for so long that the risk of breaking through it seems scarier than the pain of living with it. The red light is safe, the green light leads to scary unknowns.

We live too close to these situations to see clearly, like a page of text held right up against our face. It’s too close, too blurry; my peripheral vision is gone and I know my perspective is out of whack. I know there’s more to this than what I see, but I can’t get this situation far enough away to focus. There’s no forty-thousand foot view, there’s just this jumble in front of me. I keep trying to put the pieces together but I can never see them all at once because they crowd too close.

I don’t believe our kids can’t be healed. But I fight cynicism and jadedness, afraid to get my hopes up too much. Isn’t it stupid, the games we play with ourselves? We try to protect our hearts from disappointment by choosing constant anxiety and suffering. Because that’s SO much nicer.

But we were made to live in freedom with the green light. So far I only know two ways to get there, and we can only do one of them for ourselves. The other we have to do for each other.

The first one is surrender. Surrendered living is choosing to live inverse, with your body turned inside out, vulnerability exposed. I have to let go of my fear, my desire for control, comfort, and safety, my worship of the mediocre that is less than what He’s called us to. I have to be willing to push the edge of the map and risk it electrocuting me. I have to process which red lights are real and which are fake, because a lot of them are green lights overlaid with fear and lies. And those ones? We can run those red lights.

The second thing, which can help the first thing happen, is to intercede wildly for each other. I want you to believe the things for me that I can’t see yet, as I believe those things for you. I won’t disregard your pain or make light of what you’ve been through. I won’t look down on you for the injuries you sustained when the edge of your map violently threw you backward; I have plenty of those scars, too. But I will believe for these things that feel so impossible for you because I’ve seen Him answer them before in others. I know your red lights are meant to be green, and the edge of your map can’t electrocute me. I know your coals are meant to burn brightly again.

When we pray over someone’s grief without judging them, we anonymously bring the fire to the hard, cynical, soggy places of their heart, and in the depths things begin to change. We might not see it on the surface but that’s okay because it’s not our business. Intercession and carrying the fire is our business – what the fire does is God’s business.

The edges thaw, then loosen and uncurl. We can start to see what’s hidden beyond, and curiosity overcomes our fear. The desire for freedom overrides desire for safety and control, and we look at the red light in front of us, wiggle the gear shift a little as we drive in circles around the perimeter, feeling the changes from second to third gear.

You know, something’s odd about that light; it’s darker than the rest. Look closely and you can see where the film is peeling.

It’s green underneath.

Someone must be praying for us because suddenly third gear no longer appeals and we surrender, dropping the hammer into fourth. We run the red light – there’s no opposition, no danger, it’s been green all along – and the map unfurls in surrender. We raise our hands in worship, exposing our vitals, and He reaches in and heals us.