transcending place...

One of my favorite things about the blogosphere, is how it helps us connect to each other... be a part of each other's community even when we live thousands of miles away. Here's two of the coolest connections I've found this week. Check these out:

Polaroids for orphans in Uganda theLongbrake is heading to Uganda next week and has this great idea for another community project. Join us....

Mars Hill XYZ Project
Listen to Rob and Don talk about this brilliant idea (that originated from Muhammad Yunus). Listen to The X, Y Zs (Feb. 18th) and engage with us...

love transcends language....

Steph and I ran down to Mexico last weekend with a bunch of fantastic younglife people. We went to build a couple houses, but it felt like we were given more than we gave. I have to admit, its incredibly frustrating trying to communicate when you only know 10 words in Spanish. But the one thing that I really learned was how much we communicate with eye contact, expressions, movement and touch. We absolutely fell in love with the families we were serving and the neighborhood kids that loved to both work and play with us. I especially connected with Emelda (the beautiful little girl in pink). She was so loving towards her little brother Lalo (always guiding him and kissing him on the head). And she was also fun-loving (particularily fond of stealing Josh’s hat). On the second day, she gave us necklaces that she made--and after I hugged her tight and told her “te amo”, she pointed to my chest and asked “Jesús”?

sí, me amiga, sí!

It’s a beautiful thing to learn about the love of Christ from a sweet little 8 year old in a different country....

The other thing I realized was how much I love to hear people tell their stories. I only knew a few of the people we went with so it was great to just hear about people’s lives (especially their passions). I met some beautiful people who are rich in compassion (especially for Africa, the elderly, and the people around them). When we were sitting around the camp-fire one night, someone said something that really stuck with me... they said, “I don’t consider myself a religious person, but I love doing stuff like this, and hanging around people like this.” I thought about that for days....

...how the religious are concerned with rituals, rules, and temples. And how ironically enough, the first century Christians were called "atheists" by the Romans because they emphasized the fact that they didn't need these things. In their minds, they didn't have a religion... they had a Person-- who knew them, and loved them. So to them prayer wasn't a ritual--it was a conversation. Worship wasn't a religious ceremony--just love songs. They had no list of rules--they just lived love ("love God, and love each other.") They didn't have a temple--but believed Christ's presence was always with them.

Just spending a couple days loving people in the sand and in simplicity, made me wonder... maybe all the extra stuff is just man's attempt to make Jesus into a religion, when what he really wanted was to dissolve religion--and just show us how to love God, and love each other??

more pics of beautiful people ...

red moon rising...

Two years ago I read a book that totally changed the way I thought about prayer... actually, it totally changed me. When you read Peter Greig's stories of what has been happening all over the world, you get this feeling, deep in your gut, that this isn't some guy trying to sell an idea--but a bird's-eye view of something that's happening inside thousands of people all over the world... a connection that couldn't be driven by anything man could produce. After I read it, I couldn't help but give it to all the people i love, and pass copies out to all the spiritual leaders I knew at ASU.

Well, last weekend Peter came all the way from England to talk with a bunch of us here in Arizona. Friday morning a small group of us met in Danforth Chapel (this small little chapel in the heart of the ASU Tempe campus where the students prayed 24/7 for 56 straight days last semester). After we had this beautifully intimate time of worship together, someone mentioned that we had distinguished guests among us. But to be honest, as much as I love Peter's heart, it really felt like the distinguished guest was the Spirit of Christ... He was so present, you could feel him in the room. I absolutely fell in love with Wendy, David and Peter as they shared their hearts and what they were seeing happen with the rest of us. I wish you were there.

But one thing I just learned from theLongbrake, is that you can almost take people with you if you share: your experiences, the things you learned, and a good set of notes. So here's my attempt....

The Church:
• "The church is the only organization that exists for the benefits of its non-members" C.S. Lewis
• The spiritual battles going on right now with determine what the church looks the next 50 years
• No personality, product, or brand is going to get the job done
• The only place that things really start to happen is in our brokenness, our need, our longing (in prayer) especially when we are really honest (Peter talked about being "naffed off" at God) ;) I love Brit-slang.

Peter told stories of people he knew that lived through the spiritual awakening that happened in Scotland in the early '50s. And when that occurred, many of the life changing experiences happened to people when they were by themselves (they would wake up out of a dream, or have really intense feelings of the Spirit moving inside of them). Man wasn't controlling it, the very living presence of God was just moving.

Prayer
• "Hell is an eternal church service without the presence of God" His presence is the most important element.
• He's seen prayer room/places where the presence of God is so real and thick that non-believers are drawn to it and can actually feel it
• God doesn't always speak to us with words - we don't have to limit our conversation to Him to just words
• The way that people from all over the world have been drawn to come together and prayer is a movement of the Holy Spirit on the earth. Peter said with fear, "no one can claim this or take credit for it"
• We aren't creating this wave... we are just catching it.

What we are being called to: Isaiah 62
1. Unity (coming together across denoms)
• Continually asking God to make the church beautiful (vs1)
• "Pray like it depends of God, live like it depends on us"
2. We are called to be watchmen on the wall (vs 6-7)
• Ascend this "wall" (in prayer) so we can see things from God's perspective, learn to hear His voice, and can recognize what God is doing in the world and in our culture.
• Sometimes when people are looking for revival they are thinking of the way is happened hundreds of years ago. Its probably going to look a little different. We have to be really open to how the God is going move (when Simeon was told he was going to see the salvation of Isreal, he probably wasn't expecting a baby)
3. Go out of the gates and remove the stones (vs10)
• Lets get out into the world and serve and bless other people
• Take the stumblingblock (sterotypes) out of their way - be Visible and Accessible
• Lets be both intercessors and activists (combine prayer and justice to bring the needs of the world before God, and the bring the love of God to the world)

Wendy then spoke of how her and David were amazed at what was going on across the universities. She had this beautiful epiphany on the night before Good Friday of how Jesus was in the garden asking his friends to stay up with him and pray. And now 2000 years later, students were rising up to answer that -- nearly 70 universities were engaged in 24-7 prayer.

The rest of the weekend Peter spoke at the Take My Life gathering (I hate to call it a conference, because it felt like more than that). I expected a couple hundred people to show up, but over 500 students from NAU, UofA, ASU, our local colleges, and even LA were there. Some really beautiful things happened that almost feel too sacred to talk about here. If you're interested, give me a yell. That's a conversation that needs face-time.... and coffee.

And its so exciting to see how the Spirit is going to move in the valley. Not only are the ASU students are going to start another 40days, but I know of several local churches that are also engaging ( Open Door and Living Streams) and I'm sure there's more....

stress relief....

The new ASU Research Magazine came out last week which had this incredibly interesting article. It was about the effects of communicating affection based on the research of one of our faculty, Kory Floyd who says that "affection can be a simple, non-pharmaceutical, cheap way to reduce stress."

Kory's research involved his colleagues in kinesiology, psychology, and nursing where they measured the stress response in certain conditions. They took a group of people, and after raising their stress levels, they divided the groups into three: one group wrote an affectionate letter to a loved one, the other just thought about people they love and why they love them, and the last group just sat quietly. The last two groups' stress levels remained the same or even increased... but the group that actually expressed affection dropped sharply.

interesting, huh?
that its the action that brings the response...

We should definitely assimilate this one into our lives... and the next time life feels too overwhelming, take five minutes and send some eAffection to a friend...

...deeply...