I received an email this week that I thought was worth sharing. It’s from a friend of mine who is a part of Journey. Her son is in Afghanistan.

How about if you read it, say a prayer & then I’ll point out a couple of prayer insights from this email.

Hi Ed

I’m really feeling the need for prayer for Alan. I sent a prayer
request in, but wanted to let you know what’s going on.

We aren’t able to hear from him much; he finally called Jerrilynn
after 5 weeks of nothing. The call 5 weeks ago he said he just got
out of quarantine with the flu and a 105 fever, so for 5 weeks we
didn’t know if he was still sick or if he was better. He says he is
feeling better now.

He called Saturday, which was good to finally hear form him. He isn’t
able to tell us much so he uses code and hints. The living
conditions over there are primitive at best. They live in tents,
sleep on cots, have no running water for showers or laundry and the
temp reaches 120 or higher. They also carry 80 lbs. of gear
everywhere they go. They don’t have internet connections so we can’t
email.

He can’t tell us exactly where he is (he’s not getting our mail or
packages) but he said to be sure to keep watching the news. That’s
his way of telling us he is in the middle of all the action going on
over there.

I just feel a strong sense of urgency in asking everyone to keep
praying for him and all the guys over there. Pray for safety,
physical and mental health, that he feels God’s presence blanketing
him and continually seeks Him and that he has wisdom in treating the
wounded so they can all return safely.

Also please pray for all of us here to have strength and to feel
God’s love for us. It is so hard knowing he is there going through
all of this. I miss him so much. It is with God’s loving arms
wrapped around me that I get through this.

Kim
BLAH

I’m sure you can feel the pathos of this email. I am putting myself in her place, imagining it was one of my 3 kids in Alan’s place. Ken & Kim & I have prayed with tears about this several times. Lord, hear our prayers for Alan!

But there’s also a thing or 3 that we could learn from Kim.
1.    When you feel the prompting to pray & enlist prayer, don’t delay! Prayer is a lot about timing. Most of the cool “answered prayer” stories you’ve ever heard would have never happened if the person waited to pray.
2.    We fill the agonizing place of unknowing with God’s presence through prayer. Knowing gives us a sense of control. Not knowing makes us feel out of control & helpless. Prayer helps us to remember & causes us to embrace that our good & all-wise God is always the one in control, that there is nothing better than for Him to “be with” the one we are praying for.
3.    Parenting is “prayer-enting” – forgive the corn. But we never stop praying & bringing our kids before the Lord.

Thanks to Kim for allowing us to be a part of this with her. I am praying for a cool reunion.

I’m fresh off one of the most intense weeks of my year (not so fresh actually, I’m still dragging). I’m talking about OGN (originally Operation Good News). It’s kind of a equipping / missions / evangelism / worship / prayer & fasting kind of week. The core idea we had when myself & some other Youth Pastors started doing OGN was to help students become impact players in the Kingdom of God. Here it is 17 years later (that’s just the San Diego years – it actually started when I was in Omaha & we took kids to Minneapolis), I’m no longer a youth pastor but I’m still doing OGN.

Here’s what it looks like:
AM – Training kids to share their faith (evangelism) and answer tough questions (apologetics). These really go hand in hand. One of the main reasons people don’t do the former, is they are intimidated by questions that my come up. I teach the 1st & 2nd level apologetics classes.
AFTERNOON – Hit the beaches & other places of SD where people are hanging out not doing too much and try and get in spiritual conversations and share the good news. We do it over the July 4th holiday so there are lots of people. This year the police estimated that 1.2 million people visited the beaches of SD. O.K. Thanks for coming, now please return to Arizona – JK.
AFTERNOON – One of the 5 full days the students stay back fasting & praying for the entire time.
EVENING – Meet for some worship that only happens when you have taken some faith steps with some other people & seen God sustain you, come through for you & give you boldness. Then a message.

I see God move in unique ways during OGN. It’s a long, exhausting week, but it’s an incredible one.

One of the best things about the week this year was seeing David & Bethany (my kids) who have participated in OGN multiple times, take it to a new level.

Let me give you a couple of highlights:
•    Helping kids think through why they believe what they believe is always wonderful. This is so critical & I believe is becoming more so than ever. I don’t think people believe or don’t believe for strictly intellectual reasons, but it is important that we have & can share a rational basis for believing in God, the scriptures & the gospel.
•    People seeing God use them is like finding another gear in your life. It’s cool seeing kids, or anyone for that matter, take a risk & watch God show up.

•    Divine appointments are fun! Every year I see undeniable divine appointments. One group had a guy say that he had recently been thinking that he needed something like God & had prayed the night before that God would send someone to tell him how to connect with God. Cool.
•    Powerful prayer is something that we regularly need! Many of these kids have never prayed for an extended time or never fasted. They pray for the entire afternoon led by my friend Paul Haroutunian. The day David stayed back to pray, he got a text from a kid at the beach saying something like, “we can’t seem to get in a conversation”. They started praying & David had the name “Chris” come into his mind. He ignored it, but it kept coming back. Sure enough the next person they approached was named Chris. They talked to him for over an hour & Chris joyfully gave his life to Christ. No one involved in that will ever be the same.

•    Anointing on teaching is irreplaceable. I’ve often said, “A trained monkey could speak in the evenings at OGN.” Its electric. But the truth is God wants to move in lives & will do so as we allow the Spirit to fill. One of the nights I was speaking, I had a message I was lukewarm about. It seemed as I walked to the middle of the room, it was like the Holy Spirit was waiting. I choked up & had to get a grip before I even opened my mouth. It was a cool night.

It was awesome to work with Brandon Blumburg, youth pastor at the Bridge. I remember when he came to Christ at that church in High School!

•    “No one wants to hear this!” That is a lie from the Evil One! I was amazed again at how many people are up for a humble polite conversation open conversation about God with a stranger on the beach. I would say that well over half of the people that I personally approached were at least open to giving their views on few questions we asked people.

This was one of those weeks that I remembered why I stayed in student ministries for 2 decades

Well I promised some Gran Torino pics & here they are… a little late, but NICE!

Thanks Gene Fisher for bringing your car over, for painting it green for us!

Is this a great father’s day or what – standing around talking about a car.

I’m not a car guy, but I love listening to car guys like Butch & his buddies talk. Guys like Gene seem larger than life to me. They think of stuff & can do it! He’s also building / restoring a WW2 vintage fighter plane! Seriously? Wow!

Movie flyer was a nice touch!

Some other classics.

I won’t forget this weekend for a while. They are all good (well almost all:-) but this was epic!

This weekend at Journey we wrapped up our GATM series with a message based on the movie Traitor. It was a great weekend in so many ways.

•    TRAITOR was the movie that perhaps a lot of us had not seen or maybe even heard of. Of all the movies we looked at this year, this was the most on me, not all of our programming people were as enthusiastic about it as I was but they were gracious enough to let me have one. I loved the complex, fair & honest way that the film dealt with religion, politics, Islam and the struggle to do the right and just thing. I’m also a fan of Don Cheadle. He seems to end up in a lot of important movies with serious spiritual themes.
•    PEOPLE STEPPING UP – we had a lot of our weekend team out of town for our churches annual Married Couples Retreat in Palm Springs. I loved how our New Format (College ministry) worship band stepped up & really lead us to the throne of God. Our tech people nailed things in Jim’s absence.
•    PRAYER FOR MARIGE – I felt like we really need to pray for our missionary Margie Brewer who was attacked by wild dogs last week & almost died. People had been praying all week & God was already moving. Here’s what Linda Hassad sent me as an email update:
Talked to Margie this am
She sounds great and has a lot of praise reports.
Two of the three wounds on leg are almost healed!! She was standing when I called!!!
She said when she sees the scare on her neck it really does’t bother her it
just reminds her that Jesus saved her life!!
She has a new sense of Jesus in her life. She said because she has suffered.
A woman in Texas heard about Margie and is going
to Swaziland for 10 days to help margie.
Margie said she has felt our prayers and thanks everyone.
She feels very loved.
Keep praying for healing and no infection.
•    God Bless Linda
•    KEN & MICHELLE TIE THE KNOT – On Friday, I was honored to officiate at Ken & Michelle’s wedding at Calumet Park near where Ken & I surf. It was a great time. God has been working in both of their lives.

•    OTHER PEOPLE STUFF – The weekend was pretty much filled with people. We spent Saturday night in Carlsbad with my bro & sis in law down from the Bay Area to do Legoland with their kids. We spent some time with Kristy & Eric Dees – Kristy was on our staff here & helped Linda start our 20 something ministry, Real Life. Eric just left a secure, well-paid position at Wall Mart’s corporate HQ to be a youth pastor in a small town.

It’s Monday & my focus is on OGN. It starts tomorrow night. I’ll post on that tomorrow!

Honestly, this weekend wiped me out. It seemed like about every minute was spoken for. The hard part too, was that I had an unusually high number of meetings throughout the week, so I felt a little bit like I was running on fumes. I know I’m supposed to say the following (this would be a cliché warning) but it’s absolutely true: God seemed to sustain & strengthen & keep me engaged.

•    ANOINTED WORSHIP – I needed it! I love how God waters our souls as we declare His wonders, cry out for help, sing of our marvel at His mercy in our lives. Something about doing this together is so cool. I’m grateful for our team that leads us without getting in the way.
•    DAD’S TRIBUTE – We put together a cool father’s day tribute. While we looped pics of dads & their kids that we had taken a few weeks ago, our band did a killer version of  “Little Wonders” by Matchbox twenty or Rob Thomas. Silas Dobbs destroyed!

•    GRAN TORINO MESSAGE – This was my favorite movie of the lot. I shared that I have been a long time Clint Eastwood aficionado, and lived close to Hmong people while in Fresno. I was a little thrown by a couple of complaints that people lobbed my way about the rough language in the movie. However, I believe this was the most redemptive movie that I’ve seen in a long time. The challenge was to limit the number of redemptive threads woven in the fabric of the story that I pulled on. I could tell that God was speaking to people during the message & have gotten a lot of feedback to that effect already.

•    GRAN TORINO THE CAR – I love the cherry on top of the Sunday that our team brings to weekends. We had our car people looking all over from someone that had a Gran Torino. Butch Whitely knew a man named Gene Fisher who had a black one & was happy to let us have it out front. It was a little dirty (by his standards) so he was going to buff it out a little. Instead, he just REPAINTED THE CAR IN THE EXACT COLORS OF THE ONE IN THE FILM! Wow! Gene & I talked after the service & I got a mini education in cars, why that particular model was only made for one model year, why they are so rare. I’m not a car guy, but I love being around car guys. I think it made Gene smile to see how many of the dads & their kids were taking pics by the car for father’s day. It was cool. Pray for Gene! (I’ll post more pics when I can round them up)
•    SPORT MEMOROBILA SHOW – this has become a tradition for Father’s day. I love it. This year I brought my Phil Jackson signed game ball over. Thanks to Roger Sevier.
•    SATURDAY WAS DAVID’S GRAD PARTY – we did a group open house with 4 other of David’s friend’s families. They are all musical so they played for everyone, which was fun. Brian Berry kind of MC-ed & led a great prayer for them at the end. I’m so grateful for our student ministries at Journey – speaking as both pastor & even more as a dad.

•    WILDNESS FOR DAD’S DAY – my brother & sister in law were down from No Cal with their little guys for dad’s day. They are doing a week at Legoland. The kids are awesome… but crazy. I was hearing – “can you blah blah Uncle Ed” in my sleep.
•    SURF REPORT – finally got back in the warm water (about 65-67) for a sanity restoring surf session today.

There it is. The weekend that was. Now… GET OFF MY LAWN! (Gran Torino ref)

When you think summer, you think heat. When you think heat you think dry, at least here in California. And that’s where my soul was last summer. I’m not sure why. I couldn’t pin point a cause (a sin, a neglected habit, any more business than usual). There wasn’t any grief or loss that I was going through. I was just dry. I had been journaling about it for a while. I began to refer to it as “that thing”.

I did the stuff that one does. I knew the whole deal with Ignatius about consolation & desolation. It’s not like I was miserable or even unhappy. I just lacked something. I was dry. The thing! Dang!

I have found that God is the one who gets to decide when our various “things” get lifted. I know there are “things” that are on us, “things” that are the direct results of mis-lived lives, “things” that come from disobedience, that come from spirit sucking sin. But there are other “things” that one isn’t sure what exactly is going on.

So in the hottest part of our summer it was LEADERSHIP SUMMIT time. We’ve hosted it for about 5 years. I’ve been going to the summit for about 10. I love the Summit. For us at Journey it is one of our main equipping, inspiring & training tools. But at times, the Summit can be immensely powerful in the Spiritual realm. That was Summit 09.
•    God rebirthed love for the local church through Bill Hybles talk on leadership axioms.
•    I was inspired about His mission listening to Gary Haugen.
•    Risk began to look wonderful through Catherine Rohr
•    Craig Groeschel had me crying out to God for more “it”
•    John Burke renewed my commitment to Journey being a church for people that don’t do church.

The final talk on Friday was coming. I knew it would be great. Then I got the call. I had a major leak in my front yard. The guy putting in some sprinklers found it. My yard was becoming a federally protected wetland & I better figure something out. Just as I was about to jet & miss the last talk, my buddy & our facilities guy Matt, said to me: you get in there, I’ll go figure this thing out.

THANK GOD! Bill delivered a biographical talk on Mother Teresa that was exactly what I needed. It was largely about… wait for it… her struggles with spiritual dryness. Now this stays right here, don’t tell anyone, but I’d been a bit of a crybaby the whole summit. I could feel myself choking up several times. This talk rocked me. I typed furiously to get as much as I could down. It was fodder for my journal for 2 months. It weakened the power of “that thing” that dryness.

I haven’t had a problem since! O.k. that’s stupid. But you get the point.

This is not unique. Every year the summit is like spiritual water to me, to Journey, to our ministries. THIS YEAR’S SUMMIT IS AUGUST 6-7. Click here for the website.

So here’s what we’re doing:
√ We are hosting it again to make it as accessible as possible to Journey people and churches all over SD
√ We are offering the lowest possible rates to encourage you to sign up
√ Along with tons of other churches all over the world we are designating one of the upcoming weekends as “Summit Weekend” in which you’ll get a taste.

You will hear about the Leadership Summit a lot. The 2 days is filled with speakers & leaders from all kind of spheres. You will learn; you will be sharpened. You will be hanging out with all kinds of Journey peeps.

O.k. to push you over the edge, if you sign up this weekend, June 19-20 and let me know on the comment, I’ll BUY YOUR LUNCH ON THURSDAY, DAY 1 OF THE SUMMIT (kind of like everyone getting a free taco if the Lakers score more than 100). O.k. it’s on! El Azteca here we come!

This was a pretty stellar weekend. It was odd, throughout a basically joyous weekend; I kept having reminders that we are in spiritual war-zone. Death & evil does not take Kingdom movement without a little pushback – marriages that look they are failing, people struggling with loss, finances frayed because we still can’t find work, “this chemo is knocking me on my **%.”
•    CONGRATS TO SMART PEOPLE – Jason Denison our worship pastor & T.C. Porter (is a part of Journey & is leading a missional church plant called Adams Ave Crossing) both graduated from Bethel Seminary on Saturday. It was great to be with them – the commencement went a little long… I just got home in time for Sunday services. I know what this took. I’m proud of you guys. They both did seminary married, with kids & while serving.
•    WORSHIP – REVELATION SONG RUINED ME. I love how the Holy Spirit is free to do as He pleases. On Sunday, I’m minding my own business thinking – bummer we’re only doing 3 songs today. When our band leads us in this song called Revelation Song. I just got overwhelmed. I’m standing there, weeping out of now where… then Emily leads us in this line: “Filled with wonder, Awestruck wonder, At the mention of Your Name, Jesus, Your Name is Power, Breath, and Living Water, Such a marvelous mystery…” As my Italian phrase uttering friend Don Solin would say, MARONE! O the marvel, the wonder that we are included in this!

•    THE DANCE ROCKED – Pam Turner et al put together a powerful dance woven with scripture that preached the message before I even said a word.

•    THE MESSAGE – way long. Sorry. The subject was a weird balance of eminent practicality & philosophical reflection. The movie really raises a question that is worth wrestling with and is all over the Bible: Can we live I a world filled with evil without becoming evil? How is it that we can overcome evil with good?

•    BEACH BAPTISM – by far the highlight of the weekend was what I’m starting to call the “BEACH BAPTISM FIESTA!”

I think about 75 people were baptized. There were so many “only God” stories. Someone with an 18-year meth addiction – “I will restore the years the locusts have eaten.” A new believer (about 28) with his 80 year old grandfather,  2 twin guys in Jr High that showed up late & insisted I get back in & dunk them. Nick got some sweet ink in celebration of his upcoming baptism.  As I was walking down to the water, I saw Jim Hammond, our stellar technical arts director grinning. We kind of shoved each other & said, “this is why we do this!” I do think a view that I get, that I wish I could share with you is watching that people on the beach. I see people who have invested & sacrificed & prayed – there were a couple of great examples from Real Life of this. The look on their face as their friends stand in that water is absolutely priceless.
•    SURF REPORT – it has been a blast lately. A nice south swell rolled in last week & it’s been mucho fun, especially today.

I’m looking forward to next weekend.

Here’s some extra pics

It seems to me like this weekend was about 8 days long with the amount of stuff that got jammed into it.

•    DAVID NOBLE… HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE! On Friday morning, our son David graduated from Grossmont High School. I have witnesses! I’m going to blog about this family milestone separately.

•    GOD AT THE MOVIES 2 – The PEOPLE’S CHOICE movie was featured this week as we looked at Iron Man. There was way more in the film than I expected. Here’s a cool story about the message:

one of our prayer warriors who is a little older than me, gave me an article that she was quite passionate about. I get given a lot of stuff to read. Honestly, most of it, I just don’t get around to. The title of this one was “Repentance, the Gateway to Holiness.” Frankly, the title seemed less than appealing. But I noticed it was by John White who is a really good thinker writer. As I’m about to round file this article along with a bunch of other clutter, I decide to throw it into the file of stuff that I bring to the gym. I pulled it out on Tuesday intending to get the gist from page 1 & toss it. The article was perfect for the message. It was as if someone had done some advanced message prep for me. The quote from Finny was from the article.

•    BLESS YOU PRISON – I hope you all liked the long Solzhenitsyn, quote from Gulag Archipelago. I loved it.
•    SELAH – We were doing a run of songs that were clearly faith-building songs. I asked for people who felt prompted by the Spirit to share stories of God’s faithfulness. It was so cool to hear of MIRACLES, legit miracles, all over the place that I had no idea about it. As the evening was ending a friend who has a strong prophetic gifting (sometimes I think she is reading my journal when she has a word for me) had a Word for Journey that was very cool.
•    LAKERS UP 2-0. One dominating blow out (loved it) and one bullet dodging overtime win (better to be lucky than good, best to be both). I love the intensity of the NBA finals. I love it more when the Lakers are in the finals, especially when they are winning. Go Lakers.
•    SD IS FUN – Saturday was one of those days when you go, “O yeah, San Diego is cool”. It was beautiful with good waves and lots of friends, which kind of makes it even more fun. For me it’s a great opportunities to make the ask & invite guys who are far from God to check out Journey.

I’m heading out to the desert for a little solitude as soon as I get this posted. Have a great couple of days.

One of the cool things about DVDs is that if you want you can watch the scenes that got cut. This is especially cool in a movie like Iron Man, which is kind of short & leaves you wanting more.

Well you Journey regulars may not appreciate it, but before I even got to the worship center for the first of our 3 services (Friday Night) I had already cut a point & a clip from the message. Heck, we might still be there if I didn’t!

Because of some licensing issues, I can’t post the clip, but if you have the movie, start watching at the 18-minute mark for about 2.5 minutes. It is the scene were Jamal & Salim’s mother is killed when a mob of Hindu zealots attack his Muslim part of the slum. A vicious blow to the head kills their mother & the two little boys are left to fend for themselves. As he is remembering & recounting this part of his story he makes a powerfully disturbing statement:
“If it were not for Ram and Allah I would still have a mother.” Ram is the blue Hindu god Ramah that you see when they are running for their lives.

Here was the point on the outline:
➢    Destiny comes from God (Him) not religion (IT)…so immerse often in the glory of God

There is a tendency that we have to fight called “reification” – the “THING-IF-Y-ING” of something that is alive & dynamic. What Jesus invites us to is interaction with a person, not the performance of a religion. The way is a “person” not a system or dharma, or a Tao.

Michael Wyschogrod, a Jewish theologian says this: “The God of Israel has a proper name. There is not fact in Jewish theology more significant than this.”

We sometimes miss this in our English Bibles because the name YHWH (commonly agreed to be pronounced Yahweh) is almost universally translated as upper case LORD. Today, in synagogues of all stripes when you are reading the text you see YHWH but you say ADONAI – Lord. Whether this is a good thing or not is for another blog post. But it is easy for us to lose how often the scriptures refer to this person to whom Israel is called into relationship.

Mark Kinzer, the president of Messianic Jewish Theological Institute (click here for MJTI) says something really interesting about this. “Ultimately, all Jewish theological studies is a meditation & reflection on the mystery of the Divine name.”

A very common way that our Jewish friends refer to God is “Ha-Shem” – Ha = the. Shem = Name. Beruch HaShem – bless “the Name” you will hear a lot.

Kinzer: “In a literal sense, traditional Jews do not engage in theology. Instead, we practice Hashem-ology!”

I love that! I say this as much as I can: Christianity is not a thing that we do it is a person that we love.

But it is easier at times to just do stuff, to follow the dharma – whether it be Christian, Hindu, Muslim or secular. That is where it goes south. When my religion becomes MY religion, basically it is just a way to affirm my own rightness, my own sense of being deserving of privilege.

The unique thing about the… let’s call it “faith” … about the faith revealed in Jesus is that it all rests in connection with Him, with a person. He came to reconcile us to a Person. He came to bring those who are far away, near… to a Person; he came to redeem us (buy us back) for a Person. He came to enable us to keep the commandments, which are to love a Person & thus persons.

Our destiny will come to us in a PERSON! “Behold I stand at the door & knock”

Paul has a line about our final destiny in 1 Thessalonians 4:17… “thus we shall ever be (not ‘in heaven’ – good place) WITH the Lord” (a person).

Keep it personal!

** Michael Wyschogrod & Mark Kinzer quotes form Verge, a newsletter from Messianic Jewish Theological Institute.

Yes, this is Rod, Jason & I busting a move.  Dan Stevers is a very funny man.