Category Archives: Leadership & Teaming

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Looking for the Promised Community

I arrived late, because I over-slept. But I made it.

I was made later still by lack of parking. I drove around and around but couldn’t find a single space available. No one was in the parking lot to guide me to another place to park, or give me permission to create one. So I was on my own. I finally made my own parking space in the parking lot. Had I not been determined to be there, no matter how late I was, I would not have stayed. What was the point? It seemed no one there really cared if I, or anyone else as late as I, stayed or not because no one was outside to help with the obvious lack of parking.

I walked into the building, but there was no one there to greet me or guide me to a place to sit. I entered the room, which was very dark because the overhead lights were off and nothing but a few bright lamps lit the space. I stood in the doorway for quite a while, visible to most, if not all, the people, as I scoured the dimly lit crowd for a friendly face. One kind, recent acquaintance cheerfully greeted me, but the seats by him were filled. No one ever got up to lead me to an empty seat. Everyone was too busy talking to people around them, their friends.

Finally, as the musicians began to play again, I saw one friendly face and made my way to her chair. After a warm, long hug — we hadn’t seen each other in weeks — we chatted briefly and I thought to sit at her feet, since there weren’t any other free chairs nearby and still no one was offering to help me find one.

That’s when I heard it. The voice of my kindred spirit. I turned and saw him clearing a chair for me. Of course he would! He knows. He knows what its like to be in my place. He knows what real community is about. He understands that it must be purposeful and intentional, not random and "organic", whatever that means.

I sat with him the rest of the time.

I listened to a "talk" about community. About how it must be organic — yet no explanation was given what that means or what that looks like — about how it just happens and no amount of "systems" will make it sprout or grow; about how someone wants to move here because of the accidental and incidental "community" that exists when people unintentionally run into each other in the grocery store or at the local coffee shop. Big city flight to the appearances of community offered by a small town neighborhood.

I listened and felt sad. Sad for the speaker and sad for all who listened. If the speaker was describing what community at this place looked like, I didn’t want any part of that "organic" stuff. I’d just experienced a lack of welcome or help. If that’s what he considers community, no thanks. I can get that at the grocery store.

Real community rarely just happens. It has to be created. It has to be nurtured. And it has to be intentional. The kind of community described in the "talk" by the email-writer-big-city-mover soon to be in Nashville isn’t the kind we as followers of Christ are called to. It’s accidental. It’s nice. It’s good. And it should be used as an open door. But it’s not the real deal. The real stuff lies beyond the doors of communal living.

Real community is intentional. It is created when people intentionally build it, not just accidentally run into each other at Kroger. That’s nice and fun and wonderful and all, but what if the person who needs community doesn’t live in your neighborhood? What if they are at your work? What if they walked into your "gathering" just off the street?

What if I was that person? I would not have found it yesterday morning. I was not sought out by anyone who didn’t already know me (and very few do at this point, most of the folks I know having left already). No one was in the parking lot to help, even though there is a very, very obvious need for that. No one came to my aid as a stood as obvious as a naked statue at the "pulpit" of a Southern Baptist sanctuary, obviously in need. Yet no one was there. No one who did not already know me extended community to me. And only two from the other group who did know me sought me out.

Had I been in desperate need, I would have left still in need. And I would not return. Why should I? "Organic" community did not happen for me.

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Managing Creativity

Think You Manage Creativity? Here’s Why You’re Wrong

….my ideas will seem strange to people who believe that the best ways for managing routine tasks are equally well suited to innovative work, but they are supported by theory and practice. If it’s creativity you want, you should encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers—and while you’re at it, get them to fight among themselves. You should reassign people who have settled into productive grooves in their jobs. And you should start rewarding failure, not just success; reserve punishment only for inaction.

I found this article through a blog trail. Randy is a new friend — I think I can call him that even though I just met him — at People’s Church. He had a link in a recent post to Darrell‘s brief post on this article from Harvard Business School.

How I wish my supervisor on the field on my last overseas assignment had read this article and taken its advice to heart! So many people would have been spared a lot of pain and frustration, including he and his wife, who paid a hefty price for his inability to "manage" us. Had he just known — and allowed himself — to follow this article’s wise advice, we would have been a happy, productive, dynamic team and proved how vital our gifts were to the whole region through our powerful impact on everyone who received the advocacy and mobilization materials we were tasked with designing and creating.

Why is it mission agencies, heck most "agencies," corporations and organizations, feel compelled to find the most productive person in their sights and stick them in whatever job needs the most "productivity" without regard to their actually strengths and gifts in that area, and/or without giving them proper training before throwing them into the fire? I don’t begrudge my former supervisor anything. He was so in the wrong job. I used to tell people at Mosaic that having him in the job was like putting Robert Martinez in charge of the Creative Arts team. Everyone got that analogy immediately. Robert was a numbers guy. An incredible numbers guy. Without him, Mosaic would have been in financial chaos many years ago. He’s also an incredible counselor; caring, compassionate, considerate, quiet, wise…. and logical. Very logical. And traditional.

Robert’s an amazing man, and I love him very much. I think my former supervisor is probably pretty nice too. I just never got to see it. All I saw was a very wounded, very stressed man who wasn’t likable at all. It was all very sad.

There are times when I still find anger flooding over me. I spent a year of my life in a missionary hell. Not solely because of the mismanagement problems — there were several major factors involved — but that was a huge chunk of the problem, and at times I still get angry when I think about that time. Other times I feel tremendous sadness and sympathy for my supervisor and his wife. They were hurting people just trying to do their jobs.

Logic and creativity don’t go together the way most logic-wired people think they do. Creativity that leads to innovation isn’t linear and doesn’t happen in a scheduled fashion. It has to be nurtured, marinated and percolated, sheltered and protected and given freedom to come and go, ebb and flow and fight for its rightful — and right-fitting — place in the mix of vision, mission, culture and message. If my supervisor could have understood this he would have saved himself and the rest of his "team" an island-full of pain, frustration and anger.

Personally, I think all executives in charge of creative people tasked with innovation ought to read and implement what’s in this article. As a creative thinker and innovator, I think this should be part of Management 101 in every business, organization — especially Christian ones… why is it we Christians tend to suck the most at doing this kind of thing??…. and institution of higher learning (especially seminaries!).

Read the whole article.

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Heartsick

I’m heartsick. Absolutely heartsick. I just read Dawn’s latest post. My soul aches to its depths.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

"Mosaic Nashville’s core team met again last night…"

I read this at the beginning of a blog of one of the members of the core team…it made me lose interest in the rest of the message.

I’ll explain.  See, I wasn’t at that meeting.  Bryan wasn’t at that meeting.  In fact, neither of us even knew this meeting happened.  It seems strange to me, because I thought we were part of the core team.

Bryan and I left our core group of believers in Texas to follow a calling God placed in our hearts.  We were setting out on an adventure to reach people in Tennessee.  We were joining a group of others with the same vision and passion.  We were the FIRST ONES IN NASHVILLE!  And now we are not even included in the core team!

Dawn’s right. She has every right to be angry. I can give reasons why she and Brian weren’t there, but ultimately they’ll just sound like empty excuses.

I didn’t know they didn’t know about our Life In Christ meetings. I’d been told they knew. I guess I misunderstood.

Oh, my heart hurts!! I love Dawn. She’s been a good friend to me. I look forward to seeing her every Sunday. If I were to be totally honest, I’d say I rather cling to her and follow her around like a puppy, because she’s one of maybe three people in the group with which I feel totally comfortable being myself. It breaks my heart to know I hurt her!

And I know the pain she’s feeling. I know that feeling of being left out all too well. All too well. It’s happened too many times in my life to ever forget the sting of it, and the anger that rises from the depths of your heart, the feeling that you’d been played, lied to….  I would never intentionally inflict that pain on someone else. And yet, unintentionally, I have. Oh, Jesus, forgive me!

I hope Dawn will forgive me…. I will take every angry, hurtful word she wants to say — or yell, or scream — at me. I know it’s justified. I know where it comes from. I understand it. I just hope when its all spent she will forgive me. Forgive us.

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Structure, Spirit, Submission & Straight-Talk

Mosaic Nashville’s core team met again last night. The original plan was to go over core value # 3,  "Structure Must Submit To Spirit."

Instead, we sort of lived it out as a few details Josh needed to discuss with us took over the meeting and took us to a completely different conversational level, as well as direction… There’s so much to sort through, and some to tell, from last night. I might be writing about this for some time… then again, I might not write about it at all for a while, depending on how much settling occurs of the swirling cogitations going on in my head.

I will, in the meantime, however, share this little gem. Part of our conversation last night went like this:

Jesus: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? " (Mark 8:34-36)

Josh: I’ve always read this passage and thought, "that’s a sweet idea…. " (pause as Josh considers how to voice his thoughts)

Adria: That’s not sweet. That’s Jesus being a hard-ass.

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What Just Happened?

That’s the question I asked myself repeatedly on the way home from tonight’s team meeting. I didn’t intend to say anything revealing. I had no plans earlier in the day, though the possibility and idea of it was presented to me at one point. Even the drive there was consumed with prayers and cries to God about something, I thought, completely different.

A conversation started lightly. It quickly went deeper. I let it go there… risking the  possible pain of rejection, or worse, condemnation for who I am inside right now. The risk so far hasn’t been a bad one. The conversation went on a lot longer than I ever anticipated. It gave me a sense of freedom and comfort level I hadn’t had in this group before.

That conversation blended into the meeting… Before we ended I found myself speaking up, without really knowing what it was I had to say. Words came. Tears flowed. Openness, vulnerability…. Had I really thought the thing through, I’d never have done it. Who purposefully strips down to their skivvies and leaves themselves exposed before everyone? Not a sane person, I tell you! Only one who’s got nothing left to lose. Perhaps that’s ultimately what this is about. One last desperate plea for help because what is there left to lose? No, I didn’t bear all. But I showed enough to leave me feeling exposed… everyone got the picture.

Next thing I knew I was surrounded, held and prayed for… loving hugs, smiles and laughter. Who knew this could happen? God, in His infinite love of mystery, kept this whole chapter hidden from me until He wrote it tonight.

What happened next I could never have expected. Others opened up. Sharing moved to a deeper level. Tears from another compelled me off the couch and into an embrace. I pulled back a little to find that everyone now sat in a small circle — a cynic would call it a holy-huddle…. but there was nothing huddle-y about this moment.

Holy. It was definitely holy. I can’t tell you what that word means, but I know what it feels like. And that  room was suddenly alive with it.

We talked a little more. And then we prayed. We prayed so long my feet fell painfully asleep. Afterward no one really wanted to leave, and only did because exhaustion was overtaking us.

What just happened? Was that the beginning of something, or just a holy moment? And how do you know? Is that repeatable, or as we were taught at Mosaic LA to say: is that reproduce-able? Can others follow behind us and reproduce it in their groups? How  it is possible — how will it be so — if we can’t isolate what it was that was the catalyst to begin with? How in the heck does anyone reproduce a holy moment like that?? That’s just not something you see every day, you know?

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Redirect

The wind is roaring through the trees outside my window. Another storm is blowing in. The events of the last few days, and all I heard this evening join with the howling wind in announcing a change is on its way.

Mosaic Nashville is experiencing, for the first time, something that is inherently Mosaic. No one on the team but me seems to realize this. And I only know it because I’ve lived through many incarnations of Mosaic. Of all the wonderful things Mosaic is, one thing it is not is static. God never changes, but Mosaic remodels itself at least once every six months.

Now, that’s not a complete retrofit reinvention. It’s really a constant series of course corrections. Driven by Erwin’s passion, we sometimes head off in a direction at such lightning speed that we miss the left turn we were supposed to make. It’s… somewhere back… there…

Ten years of Mosaic life taught me that God honors passion, even when we "miss" the turn. He opens the paths up, helps us forge new roads, to get us to the place that the missed turn was going.

John is so much like Erwin. He’s not at all detail-oriented, but his passion causes you to forget that, and to consider details inconsequential to accomplishing the vision he has. He provided the fuel we need to reach escape velocity. Perhaps that’s what God intended all along. But just like Erwin, John moved so fast that he missed a turn or two. Thankfully, God always factors this into His equation for our lives!

So I’m proud to say we’re officially Mosaic now. Not even six months into this venture and we’re already working on course corrections. Now its starting to feel like home.

If this is what it really is to be a church-planter, then I love it. I really love it! Failure isn’t an option in this endeavour. It’s a given. You are going to miss some turns. You are going to blow through some stop signs. Its just a fact of life. Isn’t that the most awesome, exciting news you’ve ever heard! There is such freedom in it! Try, experiment, move, do something…. anything. If it doesn’t work, cool. You’ve learned something new.

Mosaic taught me this. Mosaic taught me to stop fearing failure. It taught me to just try something… just do something….. and see what happens.  Sometimes I think God is more concerned with the process than the outcome. I mean, take a look at some of the things He’s created. Do you think someone concerned with the outcome, with perfection, would have created the Duck-billed platypus?  Honestly…!

I feel for my teammates, though. Many seem to be struggling with the whole thing. I see a resistance to call this "failure". I sense a profound sadness from some, and confusion from others. I understand. I’ve been there before. They’ll get used to it after a while. And eventually they’ll be like me, craving constant course corrections and redirection and unable to live in a community without it.

Yikes, look at the time! So much for sleep tonight…

PS The wind is still roaring, the rain is now in Memphis. The storm should be here by daybreak.

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Failing Forward

I started reading this book today. It’s by John Maxwell.

I’ve only gotten through chapter two so far, but man is it good! And challenging.

I’ve always struggled with a fear of failure, and taking risks. As long as I can remember I’ve felt I needed to be "perfect" at something. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t even try it. It took me many years to get to a point where I’d risk looking like a fool, or worse, a failure, by stepping into things I didn’t think I could do.

For the most part, as I look back over the eight years or so since I started taking those steps, I see failure after failure. But I also see a difference in how I responded to those failures. It doesn’t keep me down as long as it used to. And it doesn’t scare me as much either.

I still have a few things in my life, however, that I look at as personal/ministry failures. India and Cyprus. I struggle with my own opinion of my time as co-team leader in India. And I have a love/hate relationship with my memories. I wouldn’t exchange the experience with a different one for all the money in the world. Yet at the same time, it was a deeply frustrating and unsatisfying one. The thing that frustrates me the most even now is that I cannot identify what exactly would have made it satisfying.

And Cyprus. I still cannot escape the deep sense that I failed because I didn’t return to the field. No amount of logic or reasoning or Scripture or God’s voice or… anything has yet to erase that sense. I just don’t know what to do with it all, how to view it.

Am I a failure? I don’t believe that question can be answered until I’m nearing the end of my days…. or perhaps until after I’m dead, for my story isn’t completely written yet. But, I must confess, there are days when I fear I am a failure. There are days when my mistakes and mis-steps pile so high that it’s hard to see past them and into my strengths. There are days when I feel I’m spending all my time in things that are not my strengths. It’s hard to not feel like a failure in that atmosphere.

That’s what I experienced that year in Cyprus. I felt so often I was not working in my strengths, and I despaired that I ever would be allowed to do so. In fairness, I cannot say that is the truth. For I don’t know if I would have been, nor do I truly know if I wasn’t working within my strengths. I have lost sight of "objective truth" (if such a thing exists) in that time period of my life. Its all a jumble of emotions and thoughts, struggles and spiritual warfare.

John Maxwell defines success in this way:

Knowing your purpose in life
Growing to reach your potential
Sowing seeds that benefit others

I wish I knew my purpose in life. I’ve read "Purpose Driven Life" and know all the churchy answers to this, about glorifying God and being a witness for Jesus to the world. But… it just seems to me, knowing God as I do, that I am not a random piece of Christ-tissue, here to just be one in a thousand. Perhaps that’s arrogant, but… dang, the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that I have a specific purpose, just as every cell in my body does. Sure every cell is here to keep me alive and well. But each one does it in a unique way. Even those with the same design have a specific purpose — whether that be to carry oxygen from my lungs to my heart, or to protect my soft parts by being a harder outer "shell"… every cell has a distinct, specific purpose. I’m convinced I do too. I just wish, with all my heart, I knew what it was (is)!

I’ve heard Erwin say on many occasions that for someone to say you have potential when you’re in your 20s is a compliment, but when they say it when you’re in your 40s, it’s an insult. As I read tonight, I came to the conclusion he’s wrong.

People in their 40s and 50s, even 70s and 80s, need to know there is still something in them that can be refined, seeds that still have yet to be sown and parts of them that still can grow.

But more than that, as I stare 40 in the face, I realize that, if I believe Erwin, then I condemn myself, as a failure, and to a life of mediocrity. There are still mountains to climb. Just because most people climb them in their 20s doesn’t mean that I can’t do it in my 40s. Just because I didn’t do it in my 30s doesn’t mean that I’ve missed my window of opportunity. Yes, the climb will be harder. I’m older and my body doesn’t respond as well to challenge, nor does it bounce back as quickly from fatigue and injury. It may take me longer, I will have to work harder. But I can still do it.

I’ve heard that the people who live the longest all have one thing in common: they never quit learning. They were always trying, learning, doing something new. I don’t want to live long. Right now I’m fighting an on-going fear of growing old. I don’t want to be alive when I’m 70 or 80, or, God forbid, even older. No, I’ve seen what age does to a body. No thank you. I’d like to die young please. But if I must grow old, and live well into those undesired ages… well then, I want to know there are still mountains I can climb. Okay, so those young’uns call it a "hill", but dang, it feels like a mountain to my legs!!

I like John Maxwell’s definition of success. But it’s a hard one for me to apply to my life, since it seems to me that all three go together and everything hinges on the first: "knowing your purpose in life."

I’m going to bed now, and perhaps my dreams will help me sort through all this and give me a little clarity…

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Decisions

Life is an endless string of them. Why is that? Why is it that just when I think I’ve got it down, I’ve made my decision, the universe leads me around a corner and smack into another choice.

Grrr…

Some decisions I’ve made over the last few days haven’t led to new choices. Yet. Some decisions are in front of me right now because of choices made by others, which then requires that I make a choice. Kind of like a never-ending game of chess. Move. Counter-move. Counter-move to the counter-move… Ai-yah! My head hurts.

I suppose most people would find all this decision-making exciting, and grown-up-ish. I find it all quite annoying right now. I’d really like my life to settle down for a while, get a little normalcy going. I’ve been living like a nomadic nerfherder for so long it’s hard to remember what stability feels like. I have just enough memory of its taste to make my heart salivate for more, and cause my mind to insist its only a mirage.

Bill Sackheim once gave me a piece of advice — well, actually Bill was full of advice — but one nugget he gave me when I first started working with him came back to my mind with brutal force recently. He regretted having his name attached to a particular piece of… um, well, a movie… He could tell me exactly the day, hour, even minute that he knew the project was going south. But he kept his name attached, and, as Bill always did, worked his butt off desperately trying to salvage a once-decent script. It didn’t work. He hated the movie. And he hated the fact that his name was now forever linked with something that in his mind was a piece of garbage. His advice to me was, "the moment you smell the winds change and see the project headed in the toilet, get out. As fast as you can, get your name off the project and keep it off. Don’t let your name or reputation (and in Hollywood the two are synonymous) be soiled by a project you no longer believe in or like."

For many decisions I make, I write my name in pencil, because I’m just not sure. Some, I write in pen, because, while there are still a few lingering questions, I’m ready for that dotted line, and all that comes with it. Only one decision have I written my name in blood, because I was willing and ready to shed mine for that decision. That’s my decision to follow Jesus, no matter what it costs me. There is no other decision I will ever make in my life where I will sign in blood. None.

In Hollywood, contracts are signed in pen — though I’m sure some felt like they’d been in blood, for all the bloodletting that preceded the signing. Even the most binding of those contracts can be broken. To pull your name off a project may cost you a pretty penny, but it won’t cost you your life.

In the world of Christians, we usually don’t sign contracts. At least not officially. Yet, the commitment made on the part of one party to another can sometimes be confused with the commitment made to God. One, or all, of the parties may have unspoken — even subconscious — expectations that all signers have signed in blood, because, this is, after all, "Kingdom Work". What happens then, when a few, or even just one, of the parties isn’t happy with the direction the project is going? Can you pull your name off, or are you bound to it, even knowing that it is not the kind of "kingdom work" you want your name attached to?

And, most vexing of all, once I’ve signed in ink, can I erase it and go back to pencil?

The chess game goes on…

Perhaps after a year or two of what the rest of the world might call boring — you know, working the same job, living in the same country, that sort of things — I’ll be ready for some more turn-my-life-upside-down kind of stuff. But please, can I just have a year or two off the merry-go-round? I’m feeling a little nauseous.

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Hey Lon! An Answer and A Bit of History

Wow, how’d you find out I’d quoted you…? I forgot to let you know (what I usually do when I quote someone I don’t know.)

You commented that it looks like I’ve joined the "Mosaic Movement" and wanted to know more.

Well… no, I didn’t join Mosaic. It kinda popped up around me.

See, back in 1994, I joined the Church on Brady — who’s official name was, and still is as far as I know, First Southern Baptist Church, East Los Angeles. It was originally founded in the 1940s out of a little store-front on Whittier Boulevard in East LA. It eventually moved to property on Brady Street in East LA, where it still was in the 1960s. The racial turmoil of the times caused people to drop the "Southern Baptist" part from the name of the church, preferring instead to say, "I go to that little church on Brady Street." The nickname stuck and eventually all the signs were change to The Church on Brady.

I started coming at the urging of a friend, Darla, around the end of 1993. I joined the sound team in January ’94 and joined the church a few months later. I’ve been a member there ever since. At that time Bro. Tom Wolf was the pastor. In April ’94, however, Erwin McManus was named Senior Pastor and Bro. Tom took the position of Teaching Pastor.

In 1997 we made our first foray into services at a new location — East LA College (ELAC). We planned to start meeting there full-time come January 1998 because we were outgrowing the Brady site. This presented a small problem. The Church on Brady would no longer be the church "on Brady Street." Now what? I remember some talk about what we would call ourselves… and for some reason I want to say we had kind of a naming contest going, or something… but I can’t remember. At any rate, Erwin eventually came to the name, Mosaic; the elders voted and it was decided. Mosaic we would now be.

In 1998 we moved both our morning and evening services off the Brady Street property. The only thing that still met there were our Wednesday evening classes and monthly Lord Supper services. ELAC was one of the meeting places. The second was a downtown nightclub, at that time still call the Shangri-La, once owned by Prince. We had actually looked into buying it, but when we couldn’t agree on a price it was sold to someone else. That new owner was willing to rent us the space for our "Urban" services on Sunday evening.

Unfortunately, there’s a growing misconception that Mosaic began with that "Urban" service at the SoHo (as the club was then called). This isn’t true on many levels. As I’ve pointed out, Mosaic was begun as First Southern Baptist over sixty years ago now. Also, we’d been having those Sunday night services at the Brady site for over a year before moving to the nightclub. However, up until we moved to the Mayan night club a few months ago, the SoHo had been the longest venue we’d been at since we ventured off Brady Street. I think many people hear Erwin refer to that fact and assume that Mosaic started in ’98 with that service. Just NOT true. 🙂

Eventually our morning "Metro" services were moved back to the Brady site for a year or so, mid-99 thru 2001. Somewhere around April or May 2001 (I was in India at the time) Metro moved over to San Gabriel High school, and met there until March of 2004, when it moved over to the night club as well.

In 2003 we finally sold the Brady site property, and in 2004 we purchased some land in… La Puente area, I think… I’m not really sure where it is. I think it will eventually become the office facilities. And hopefully, with any grace from God, it will also become a housing facility for our overseas workers when they are in the States (a quad-type home featuring 4 2-3 bedroom apartments with laundry facilities and small kitchenettes all of which share a main large common living room-type common area has been suggested by some friends of mine…).

That’s kind of the history of Mosaic/Church on Brady/First Southern Baptist Church as it pertains to me. My involvement with it, however, and my convictions run much deeper and are more complex.

Let me see if I can detail all that out in another post… or two…

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It IS About You, It IS About Me

“It’s not about you.”

It’s the latest mantra of western Christians. I suppose it could be credited it to the well-meaning, well-spoken words of Rick Warren in his book, “Purpose Driven Life”. However, I think we in the Body of Christ have come to misuse and abuse this saying. It’s become a stick we beat people with instead of an encouragement to build people up, and help them refocus their lives on God’s purpose for them.

I heard it again tonight. Well meant, I’m sure. But completely misused and, in part, abusive. It felt like a complete slap in the face. As if all that God had been revealing to me, all that God has been doing in my heart and soul over the last two years is a lie. That I am being selfish and self-centered to even want God to care about me or about my “trials”.

The Truth I’ve come to find in God’s Word, and in my own experience with Him over the last couple of years, is that it IS about me. It really IS. About. ME.

God is so very in love with me. With me of all people! His life, His existence, His focus is all about showing me just how truly, madly, deeply He loves me, how He strongly He longs to have an intimate divinely sweet relationship with me, how He wants nothing more than to pour out into me all the love and grace and mercy and gentleness and kindness and joy and so much more that He has… to pour all that He is and has into me every second of the day, how He has so many mysteries and secrets and passions He is desperate to share with me. From the moment I wake up to the moment I wake the following morning and round again, I am on His mind. I am the focus of His attention. I am the apple of His eye.

Think of that! WE are on His mind, the Creator of the Universe thinks of nothing but US every second of every minute of every day of every month of every year forever.

Why do you think Jesus suffered the brutal death He did? For me. To give me Life.

Yes, yes, I know… He didn’t come just for me… or did He?

What is it we Christians always say to those we are leading to Christ? “Even if you were the only person on earth, Jesus would still have died for you.”

Why is it okay to say that to others and not to believe it ourselves? If I were the only person on earth Jesus would still have died for me. THAT’S how much He loves me.

I think we don’t really believe that line we feed our potential “converts”. We believe it for, and about, them at that moment. But not for and about ourselves. And once a person commits their lives to Christ, we do a bait-and-switch and tell them “its not about you, it’s about them.” As if now that God has us, He no longer cares about our wants, needs, hurts, desires, longings.

So wrong. So very wrong.

Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son… Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. — Eph 1:4-6, 11-12 (The Message)

“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! — Jesus (Matt 7:9-11)

I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me. — Song of Songs 7:10