What do you think of when someone asks you what your longest relationship is? Your spouse? Do you think of that serious girlfriend you had in college? Maybe you think even farther back to your parents…
I had never thought of this before, but God’s Word says that He knit us together in our mother’s womb. He knew us before we were even born. My relationship with God is my longest standing relationship. Wherever you stand with God, He IS your Creator. He has a relationship to us even if we don’t have one toward Him. Its that understanding that has me even further evaluating how deep my relationship with Him is. At this point in my life it should be my closest and deepest relationship I have…but, is it?
So many of us have sat in church our whole lives and are no deeper in love with Jesus today for all sermons and all the Sunday School lessons we’ve sat through. Mark Batterson says, “We are educated way beyond our level obedience.” I will add this – For some reason all this “learning” about God hasn’t translated into intimacy.
My retreat week was amazing. God came through just as he always does, the key this week was that I was actually still enough to hear him.
It was like God was beating on a bass drum on my retreat. He spoke similar messages through his Word and several authors that I read during my time.
God spoke clearly to me – “You’re not that big of a deal. I, however, AM.”
He spoke that message through Brennan Manning…
“He was not poor that we might be rich. He was not mocked so that we might be honored. He was not laugh at so that we would be lauded.”
- The Furious Longing For God
He spoke it again through Henri Nouwen, in a little book I have read now three times and still keep getting profound nuggets of truth from…
Nouwen is not talking about “connecting to your audience” or making sure your message is relevant to the audience. He is talking about personal relevance. So many leaders, including me, struggle with “finding their voice,” the place where they get their five minutes of fame. Being asked to speak on a subject at another church. Being recognized by a group of people for your contributions to a subject or area of expertise. Or getting that email that a “ministry celebrity” is now following you on Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know very many of these ministry folks. I assume (maybe that will get me into trouble) that they all have their hearts right and God is using that in awesome ways to impact all of our ministries. What I do know is this…I know I am not the only one who struggles with wanting to find my way into that group – wanting to be recognized.
If that wasn’t enough, Nouwen threw me a right cross to the throat with…
“The question is not: How many people take me seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus?”
That’s the question I struggled with this past week. Not struggled with how to answer it, but struggled with exactly how deep in love I am with Christ.
What about you? Pastors…Ministry Staff…volunteer leaders…Are you burdened by results driven ministry or are hanging out in an intimate relationship with Christ that brings with it immense freedom?
There are a few words that have been haunting me these last ten days or so…”Maybe you aren’t as close to God as you think you are.”
I first heard those words at The Whiteboard Sessions spring 2008, delivered by Vince Antonucci. I had quoted him a few times over the last year, mostly in regards to others whom I was essentially judging for not reaching out a hand to the lost and broken. This last week, God turned my tables upside down. He clearly communicated to me, “Jason, maybe you aren’t as close to me as you think you are.” This shook me. What shook me most was that I knew it. I’ve known it all along. I knew I was substituting message prep and creative planning for intimate time with my Abba and Savior. I have just kept justifying it. ”But God, people are coming to your Son at a greater rate than I have ever experienced in my life.” The whole time he was saying, “But Jason, I want to be with you too.”
On my retreat this last week, I was reminded of a song from 1986 by Gospel music’s Larnelle Harris. The song is called, “I Miss My Time With You.” In this era of modern churches, it seems maybe a little cheesy…but, it reminded me that God comes each day to our spot, waiting for me to arrive. He never misses a day. He always arrives on time and is never weary of hearing from me. Day after day, God continues to be faithful to me while I go off and schedule all kinds of things in his place. If there is one thing God spoke to me during my retreat, it was “Stop trying to do this alone. I can, will, and want to help…Come to me.”
The rest of this week I will expand on how that impacts all the other areas of my life…
Well without warning you, my faithful blog readers, I went on a retreat for a week with Katie to a great place in Wisconsin called Cedarly. It is a pastor’s retreat center run by Pastor’s Retreat Network. It was one of the top ten experiences in my life. I will get into the specifics of some of the stuff God revealed to me later this week, but until then, these are the two things you need to know:
1. If you are a pastor in a local church in a full-time capacity, you have to get here. No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. We need time to reconnect to God and our spouses. There is no substitute for quiet, dedicated time listening to God speak into your life. Pastor’s Retreat Network believes in it and you so much they don’t charge you a dime to be there! That includes lodging and meals by a personal chef…Mike rocks!
2. If you believe in your pastor’s work and want to see him or her succeed in their calling from God, send them here. Also, make a donation to Pastor’s Retreat Network. Like many other non-profits, they are hurting financially right now. This is a ministry the church needs to help the mission succeed! You can make a donation here.
Stay tuned all this week for posts on our experience!
So all this week I have been celebrating nine years of marriage to my amazing wife Katie (@katiegordon). I’ve been digging into the sacred vow that I made to her that day nine years ago.
For the most part, Katie and I have both been healthy people in these nine years. But in the Spring of 2008, I started experiencing some health issues. Most of the issues I was experiencing were brought on by the stress in my ministry. I wasn’t taking very good care of myself and wasn’t managing stress at all. Katie was so patient with me in encouraging me to see my doctor and helping me see that most of what I was going through could be dealt with in just getting healthy and taking time to breathe. At one point I was literally going crazy trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I sat around and worried about it.
It was a rough time, but we committed to hold tight to one another in sickness and in health. So many couples are destroyed by their inability to understand the commitment when times are hard. Marriage is easy when we walk through better, richer, and health. Our relationships are defined by how we love in the worse, poorer, and sickness. After nine years, I am not there. I will never be perfect (sorry, honey!) but every day that goes by I am shaped into the man God wants me to be and my progress is marked by how I am responding to the good and the bad, the pendulum swings, of the commitment I’ve made.
So last night we went to dinner for our anniversary. We had a great time and it got us thinking about all the “great” times we’ve had over the years.
Check out the little video we shot about Katie’s memory of a certain one of those instances.
Warning- this is about 5 minutes long, but worth every second!
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