Reflections after a Vineyard Summer Camp

The first day back home after our annual Vineyard Summer Camp in Sweden is always a day of unpacking, doing laundry and reflection. It is strangely quiet around here and the lingering warm fuzzies of sweet fellowship are slowly fading, although it is nice to sleep in my own bed and eat some greens instead of the camp hamburgers. I was so blessed but also stretched and provoked by Sunny Gilbert, Alan Scott and Christy Wimber, who visited our camp this year. Alan and Christy both talked so fast that I need to hear their excellent teaching again. Most of the sessions are already available at http://www.youtube.com/user/vineyardnorden thanks to Jørgen Bjerke from Oslo Vineyard.

Bill Johnson says that if there is a gap between what you believe to be true and what you experience in real life it creates frustration and/or hunger for more. I try to focus on the hunger for more, because I know all the promises of the harvest are available to me and I stretch out and press on. Once every few months I do muster up the courage to pray for a neighbor on non-Christian friend and then brag about it afterwards, whereas Alan's whole church is engaged in day-to-day encounters with people, showing them God's love on an on-going basis. Causeway Coast Vineyard in Ireland is having a real impact on their city and not just keeping the blessings within the four church walls. I feel like I need to have my old dusty phariseic brain blasted by the Holy Spirit so that I can see all this and walk in it more. I find it hard to grasp it, I guess that is why I need what they call the renewing of the mind.

I run a Bed & Breakfast and have spent this hot morning cleaning rooms while contemplating and praying, trying to reflect and discern what the Lord wants to do in our church during this new season where we are without a Pastor. We have a great leadership team where we experience unity and hunger for more and we also have many people in our church who have great but different ideas of how we can fine-tune and upgrade this wonderful messy diverse cluster of people that God calls His church. I am determined to do more outreach and invite more people in, that is one thing that is clear on my heart. Yesterday someone said to me: "Why make the service so seeker-friendly, no seekers are coming anyway" and I have been thinking about that. Actually I was praying about it while making the beds and David yelled up the stairs to ask me what I was doing. "I am getting rooms ready" I answered. "Is anybody coming today?" he asked. "Not that I know of, but it is high season and I want to be prepared". Immediately the Lord dropped the scripture into my heart about being ready in season and out of season. It became so alive in my spirit that the Lord wants us to do in the church what I naturally do in my Bed & Breakfast. It is high season, it is a season of harvest. We want to go out and we want our church to be a place where newcomers can feel welcome and embraced by the Most High God. Even if right now it looks like nobody is coming I want to live in the expectation that the kingdom is breaking through. It is at hand, right in our context. Not just in Redding or in Ireland, but right in Roskilde where I shop and work and live my life. I want to stay on the harvester, I do not want to jump off the harvester to chase mice. Lord, continue to stretch me so that I don't limit you, but expect that you want to do great things right here in our town.

God is in my garden

The first week of July our town is always buzzing. Roskilde doubles in population and I stay home from the office to sell showers in my basement to young people attending our famous music festival. I have worked like crazy all Spring translating testimonies for the new Metal Bible, which is also being released at this year's Festival where the main music theme is Metal. A team of fiery evangelists led by great friends of mine, Roul and Birgitta Åkesson, are walking around handing out Bibles at the Festival parameters. Dax from our church is part of the team and he reports to me daily (read: turns up for lunch) because I am dog-sitting the dog that he is looking after for a week. (The poor dog has been sublet and might end up with an attachment disorder, but that is a different story). I really wanted to join this evangelism team and have fond memories of a few years ago when our whole church was out there with the same group, doing Servant Evangelism and giving away Bibles also. Now I have to stay put, this is the busiest week of the year in my Bed & Breakfast. This week only I am selling basement showers to dusty, friendly young people. Some of them return each summer and call me their Festival Mom. I make a sweet dollar at it, selling coffee and muffins and set up a make-up mirror and cell phone charging panel in my shed. They love my flush toilet. And I give them the New Testament text tucked in between colorful testimonies, one of them my own. Hardly any of my guests turn down this gift, they like the personal twist of my story in it. A guy who showered here yesterday and got a Bible then had read my story in his tent last night and had questions when he turned up today. We have lots of conversations about faith while they sit around and wait for the shower. "Have you ever received a sign?" asked a young man today and I explained to him how God is very much part of my life every day, intervening in big and little things. "For example an amazing thing happened just yesterday" I told him. And now I am going to tell you too, because it really was an amazing turn of events that only God could have orchestrated.

Dax came for lunch yesterday and was sharing excitedly about all the young people that they had shared with and prayed for. He had been teamed up with someone from another local church who shared his passion for spreading the good news. And I told him that this other local church is really reaching people. "For example that traffic cop on that TV series, do you know who that is?" "Yes, he lives in my suburb." "Well he got saved at that church a while back and is now a Christian". It was just a quick comment in a long conversation over lunch and Dax headed back for another round in the field.

An hour later he called me, all panicky. "There are big strong Festival bouncers here, all of a sudden they are saying we are not allowed to stand here, we need a permit. At first one guy came and I told him I was not the leader of this outreach, but I was sure the leader had his permits in order. A little while three big strong menacing guards came and told us to pack up and get a move on quickly. And we are all shook up because they were so angry. Can you call the county and find out how we get a permit?". I did some phoning around and kept getting redirected till I finally spoke to the right lady. Except she was not really that right, she was also menacing and hostile and did not want any group to do any outreach of any sort. "But they are not setting up a table, they are just pulling a small trolley around, handing out free stuff". "They are not allowed to be anywhere in town, the streets get too congested". She only got more irritated when I mentioned that we had been allowed other years, so finally I hung up and phoned Dax and told him that we need a miracle because we are hitting closed doors. Dax prayed in the street, I prayed in my garden. And all of a sudden a police car rolled by Dax and in it sat Vlado, the Christian policeman that I had just told Dax about over lunch. Vlado rolled down his window and yelled "Keep up the good work" and Dax told him about their new problem. "You are very much allowed to be here" said Vlado, "and if anyone gives you any trouble, just give them this". He gave Dax his business card. And the team kept sharing their faith and their Bibles yesterday and today and did not get any more flack. An amazing story of God making a way where there was no way. A lunch conversation turned into a miracle. Yet another fingerprint of God in my life that I could share with a young man between showers today.

Because God is in my garden.

Pearls

I have many pearls in my pouch.
Each day I pull them out and look at them.
Sometimes I drop one.
It rolls away and I chase after it.
Different pearls, many colors, several facets.
Some of them are without real worth.

You are the Pearl above them all,
The only one that is really genuine.
The others allure me with neon colors,
Glitter and sparkes -
They seem more accessible, easier to grab.

You don't always shine as brightly at my first gaze.
But your brilliance changes when you touch my skin.
You can get under it like none of the others,
My heart changes when you come close.

Pearl of Great Price, help me to be a better assessor.
Help me to let go of worthless beads.
If I could only pull them out all at once
And dump them, smash them, be done with them.

But every morning I get my pouch out.
Every morning it is full of pearls.
I must choose.
Today I choose you

Miracle in the kitchen

I got married in my early twenties and had never cooked a meal in my life. My husband had done chores at home since he was little and I didn't want him to find out how clueless I was where soufflés and sausages were concerned, so one of the first days of our married life in our small apartment in Dallas Dave went off to work and I went off into the kitchen. I had read Proverbs 31 and a couple of cookbooks and I had gleaned that women are supposed to be able to multitask. So I got three different dishes happening at the same time. It was such a long time ago, but I think I was mixing a batch of cookie dough, making a vegetable sauté and I was also heating some oil in a big pot in order to deep fry something. I must have gotten too absorbed in the cookie dough, so when I turned around after a few minutes the cooking oil in the pot was on fire. Big flames were shooting up out of the pot. Panic-stricken I headed for the sink and turned on the tap.

That was the first and only time in my life that I heard God's audible voice. He did not say "I am that I am" or "Thou shalt be my prophet". He said: "Don't put water on it, just put the lid on the pot and get it off the stove". I did that and only got a slight burn on my finger, I was able to quickly stop the fire that way. Later people have told me that this was a good thing because water can be bad on oil fires. And on a regular basis, in the thirty years that have passed since that day, I have told the kids in Childrens' Church that most of the time when God speaks it is not in an audible voice, but more like a thought or the flutter of a butterfly wing in your heart. "But one time He did speak to me in an audible voice" I say, and then I tell them about my first attempt at being a super chef pie-slinging gourmet wife and how God bailed me out.

I have always been thankful for that little incident but today, so many years later, out of the corner of my eye I watched a fire safety show on TV. A man at a fire testing center demonstrated how just one sprinkle of water on a burning pot of oil made flames burst out everywhere. Dave came in and I rewound and showed it to him too. I had not realized what serious danger I was in back then. "If God hadn't spoken to me that day you might not have had a wife!" I told him. And I am still sitting here, dumbfounded. What a miracle it was, how awesome that God spoke to me so loudly and clearly at a time when all my thoughts concerned the difficulty of being a super wife. Divine impressions was the last thing on my mind that day and yet He spoke to me! And I have had thirty wonderful, rich years of raising three kids and a church and I have cooked many great meals since that day. On occasion I have paused and been thankful for that little incident, but now that I've seen what could have happened I am just in awe!

I wonder what it will be like when we get home and God starts rewinding the movies of our lives. I think there will be lots of playbacks of situations like the experience I had that day. Times when He kept His hand on us and had His angels working overtime just to keep us safe. What a privilege to be a friend of God. To go through life with access to the Most High, to have Him speak to us, whether it be like the flutter of a butterfly wing in our heart or major earthquake-like encounters. Or just good common sense that your Mama never taught you. Thank you Father God for keeping your hand on me. That day and every day!