bible

The Kind Of Powerful Experience of God’s Love That Makes International News Is Available Anywhere

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Got time for God, friend?

person holding Holy Bible

In the last article, we discussed the hints of a spiritual revival breaking out, especially among youth. Here’s another example of a quiet revival that occurred among some youth several years ago. And when I say ‘quiet revival,’ it wasn’t so quiet.

Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)

A few Christian youths who lingered after church to pray made international news headlines.

The Washington Post: Why students at Asbury University are praying and singing round the clock

The Washington Post: Asbury University revival set to end after attracting thousands

A reminder that the Washington Post isn’t sympathetic to the majority of a Christian worldview on social issues. The newsworthy facts remained that over 60,000-70,000 people from 200 academic institutions and multiple countries came to a sleepy 6,000-person town over two weeks to experience the felt sense of God’s love more deeply. This event, however startling, was not entirely dissimilar from what has happened in previous generations and places when multitudes gave their lives to Jesus.

Many of us have experienced something similar to what happened at these events.

For example, several years ago, I was sitting beside a lake one morning, minding my own business, when God’s spirit ushered into my life and gently woke me.

Not from my sleep but from my life.

Wake up! Holy Spirit seemed to be nudging me.

What happened at Asbury reminded me of this experience. A bunch of regular kids attended a church service. It was an uneventful day.

But God‘s spirit rushed in and grabbed them, gently shaking them with a deeper awareness of His love.

The kids stayed and worshiped.

We know someone who attended that event. This person said that the sense of God‘s love was palpable as soon as you entered the building. Many others felt it too. In the sermon that Zach Meerkreebs preached just before this outbreak, he said, “Make sure you experience God‘s love. Don’t graduate until you have experienced God‘s love. Don’t leave this building until you have experienced God’s love.”

How deeply intimate and far-reaching is his love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding – this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!

Ancient Text

And, coincidentally perhaps, I was asked this question this morning: How would this (day, month, or) year look different if you really understood that you are deeply loved? A good question. (Who wouldn’t fly around the world to experience a bit more of the felt presence of God’s love?)

But we can also experience this type of powerful felt presence of God’s love in our own homes.

The time when God touched me, powerfully, precisely as happened in Asbury, I also experienced a deeper understanding of God’s love just before it. I had listened to a sermon by Rolland Baker. He said that many of us are seeking outpouring, seeking even what happened in places like Asbury, but what we need to seek is simply God.

And so this touch of God at Asbury that shook the world, that is waking us up to say, there is more, is possible within each of our hearts and in our homes and in our churches in every moment.

Got time for God?

Thanks for liking me! I like you too! – Proven HERE, HERE, and HERE! Let’s journey together!

Photo Credit – Where is Love Found? by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

This Is How To Feed Others Spiritually – 3 Methods

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Why not share a bit of your food, friend?

ostrich drinking water from a white plastic bucket

Make some for yourself, too, God seemed to whisper to me that day several years ago. God had been nudging me to make fleece pants with my kids and their friends. Now, He seemed to be nudging to make fleece pants for me, too.

So, I was online ordering fleece fabric.

A particular type of fabric stood out to me, as joy bubbled from within. I bought the fabric with golden retrievers stamped all over it (True story, but why would I lie about that?). I made my pants.

And now, I will convey something challenging to articulate.

Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)

Shockingly, these doggy fleece pants are like a key opening a door between another culture and me.

People who would never even bother looking down their nose at me suddenly become my best friends. I am accepted by a whole new world of people when I wear these pants. These pants melt their hearts, and they pour their love on me, after asking me where they, too, can buy the same pants.

Note: I say this HUMBLY, but in THIS article, I deferentially mention the name brands of the clothes I am wearing, because I am THAT kind of a person. Just saying. Read more HERE.

But a couple of stories to illustrate the surprising allure of these doggy pants: Once, someone exclaimed jubilantly that she loved my pants and then recounted a surprising amount of her life story as I stood, listening, stunned and speechless, my to-go coffee cup waiting in my hand, mid-air, for her to finish. This kind of thing happens often.

It happened today.

The teenage guy working at Tim Hortons spent five minutes before taking my order telling me he loved my pants, telling me a story about his dog, and then speaking with the lady next to him about whether she liked dogs or cats better.

I listened mutely and smiled.

When I finally pulled away from him to sit at a table to drink my coffee, I noticed the table was covered with crumbs. I returned to that young man to quickly ask for a napkin to clean it. He leaned in to confide that they are understaffed, “But I will clean the table for you.” Stunned, I watched him wipe my table.

Then he said, “People really surprise me sometimes.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

He was quiet.

I offered, pointing to the messy table, “You mean how people are always making messes?”

He nodded.

He seemed to need a crumb to eat, as he lingered a bit longer at my table. I wondered what I could say in the several seconds left of our interaction that could feed him just a little. “Well, it’s a good thing that God forgives us after we create our messes.”

I looked innocently away, waiting for the metaphor to nourish his soul.

The crumb nourished him, and his hunger pangs made him sputter forcefully, “I can’t believe people don’t know I’m a Christian! I don’t even smoke!” He then felt the need for some reason to confess to speaking a partial truth to me, a perfect stranger, by quickly adding, “Well, I do smoke weed.”

My brain was overheating. “Did he say that smoking weed made him a Christian?” I wondered.

Or that smoking cigarettes made a person not a Christian? It’s hard to keep all that theology straight – I can empathize!

“And so, where do we go from here, God?” I prayed. What do I say in the twelve nanoseconds before he departs to resume his job? Clearly, he was being nourished, somehow, by the crumbs of this measly conversation.

But Jesus said, “There is no need to dismiss them. You give them supper.”

“All we have are five loaves of bread and two fish,” they said.

Jesus said, “Bring them here.” . . . They all ate their fill.

The Message

“Well, if we can truly understand that God loves us after we mess up our tables, that’s the important part, right?” I offered him, like a crumb. Would he take and eat?

He stared at me, fumbled, and then dropped his cleaning cloth.

His hat fell off as he bent over to pick up the fabric. He stared at me a moment before picking that up, too. He was deep in thought.

Eye contact one more time before he walked away.

Was there a glimpse of light lit for a moment, so that Your light broke through this ordinary day for a clerk at Tim Hortons, God?

May this generation find messy tables wherever they go, we pray.

And may the crumbs somehow, by your grace, be multiplied to nourish the soul. There is more, there is more, there is more, He is saying to the teenage boy working at Tim Hortons. There is more to this story, too. I’ll continue it another time.

For now, how can our lives spiritually feed others?

  1. We get thirsty.

Jesus said, “. . . Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever.”

The Message

  1. We learn how to listen.

My sheep recognize my voice. I know them, and they follow me.

The Message

  1. We trust Him to lead us, come what may.

In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.

The Message

That’s it.

(And may you, your doggy and your doggy pants1 (of course!) bring some love and crumbs to nourish a spiritually hungry world, too, friend.)

Thanks for liking me! I like you too! – Proven HERE, HERE, and HERE! Let’s journey together!

Photo Credit – 3 Methods / 3 Ostriches by Jutta Kamp on Unsplash and Me-and-My -Doggy-and-My-Doggy-Pants (Of Course!)

1 Or however He leads you in your culture.

What Happens When They HAVE To Love Us? We Relax And Have More Fun!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Halloween is around the corner, so I thought I’d post about the last time I dressed up.

No, it wasn’t Halloween then or a holiday of any kind. Why do you ask? But this got me thinking:

What if people HAD to love us (no matter what we wore or how silly we acted)?

The good news is that depending on what your friends and family believe, they do!

For example, we homeschool our kids, so we read to them from books that say things like this:

Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it.

The Message

Then, we go to a church where they read the same stuff.

At church, they HAVE to love us, too! If we find people who don’t love us there, we can find some others to love. We’ll all find true followers of Jesus who promise to love us no matter what our personality – even the “unusual” ones – whew!

So we can finally relax and have fun.

We’re loved!

This is good news for me in particular because I figured out what my family REALLY thought about me lately, and it was a bit of a shock.

Here’s what happened.

We were reading an excellent book together as a family.

Caveat: Before you get the wrong idea of us all drinking hot chocolate and stringing popcorn and cranberries by the fire as we each take turns reading aloud together, singing a song between each chapter, aka Little House on the Prairie style, no, it wasn’t like that. It was an audiobook played in the car during our day-long drive to visit extended family. The book just helped us not to want to kill each other.

Setting the mood.

Anyway, the book was excellent. It was called Jesus Revolution. I would highly recommend it*. We all got into the story, and even the child we initially had to bribe to listen to the story with us asked for more!

At one point in the book, the author, Greg Laurie, is described as having something like “deep spiritual depth and a bit of an unpredictable, crazy personality. You never knew what he was going to do next.”

My husband looked at me sneakily out of the corner of his eye, smirking. “WHAT???” I asked. “What are you smirking about??”

“Oh,” he replied, looking away casually, “just something said in the book.”

“What??” I protested. “I’m not…!” And then he laughed, and there was a muffled chuckle, I think, from the back seats.

So I guess my family thinks that his personality describes me!

And this reminds me of what we did last night! I bought a gift for my family – well, sort of. Okay, yes! I did buy it for myself and pretended to give it to the family!

It is called The Adventure Challenge. You scratch off an “Adventure,” and then the family HAS (Yes, teens, that word is “HAS”) to do the Adventure together. Last night, we strung out yarn as an obstacle course through the basement, and we had to go through it as fast as we could, being sprayed in the face with water each time we accidentally touched a string.

It was fun.

And my superhero outfit? Yeah, I am wearing a bathing suit over the top of my leotards. And yes, the big “S” on my shirt WAS made a spur of the moment. It helped me go faster!

I even got first place!

(Before any of the others went, I was ranked first, that is.)

So relax! Make your teens do fun and crazy stuff with you! If you’re unsure how, try making “fun” a prerequisite to “food,” for example! They’ll thank you later! (When they’re old they may thank you – At least that’s what happened to us!)

Your kids are loved, too!

And that was the message of the Jesus Revolution book, actually. It was about a bunch of crazy hippy kids who were overcome, in some cases literally, by the love of God. That love overflowed to others and transformed a nation (Even Time Magazine did a cover article about this movement on June 21, 1971).

So go ahead and be the real you, whatever that looks like.

And then, after you’ve let your stomach fat and the rest of the real you out a little bit, if you’re desperately looking for a way to improve your self-esteem, spend a few more minutes with the kind of people who believe they HAVE to love you!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Footnotes

*If bribing your kids to watch a movie with you is less expensive than bribing them to read a book with you, the movie Jesus Revolution can be rented here.

ADVICE: Worship A Good God Instead Of Foul Demons!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment
person holding pink flower
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

So, I’ve been reading about becoming a successful and influential online figure that others look up to and admire.

Did I mention that yet?

Yesterday, I learned that we need to establish AUTHORITY that we KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON before we boss others around. “So THAT’S what I have been doing wrong!” I realized, slapping my head with this newfound wisdom. So today, I will ASSERT my AUTHORITY and EXPERTISE in the following sentence before I advise you:

I WAS VOTED ONE OF THE BEST DRESSED PEOPLE (!!) IN MY SMALL RED-NECKED HIGH SCHOOL SEVERAL DECADES AGO!!

And so, because of this obvious flair for fashion, you can now wholly trust me as I tell you about the cultural fashion trends I am currently observing!

As I sat in the new Mexican taco place last week, I was scratching my head and puzzling over the décor.

Why was this place decorated with skeletons and skulls?

The previous month, in another restaurant, when the 20-year-old kind waitress turned, her forearm flashed a skull tattoo. She didn’t look or sound like a terrifying “Hell’s Angel” motorbike member, cussing and starting fights. Or whatever scary biker guys do – I don’t happen to have any good friends who are active Hell’s Angels members, come to think of it!

Actually, there is one scary-looking biker guy who attends our church, but his heart is so kind and full of a desire to love like Jesus that I forgot he’s frightening.

a man in a santa hat holding a cat
Photo by Petrebels on Unsplash

Anyway, this young waitress had a kind smile and a genuine desire to see us be well served.

She just happened also to like skull tattoos. “Why did she like a skull tattoo so much that she wanted it engraved into her arm, never to come off?” I wondered, scratching my head, trying to figure out this new fad.

Now, as proven here I am a very cool person, and with only a BIT of imagination, I am even CLOSE to attainting the title of “Cool Surfer Dude!” At least, this is the case in my imagination. (Now – What is my editor yelling at me again for anyway? – And something about “Authenticity”? She’s a bother!)

We can all define ourselves the way we want, and I am definitely cool.

Anyway, since I am, as proven above, so VERY cool, you’ll want to sit down and listen to me when I talk about tattoo fashion trends and current decoration styles in the public space.

The only problem is, with this ONE vogue trend of demonic fashion decor, I have absolutely NO idea what is going on. (I’m SURE there are NO other cultural fashion trends for which I am confused – Rest assured!)

The point of this post?

We’ve tossed the church as the source of a beautiful gate leading to God’s heart. The gate has cobwebs, and the path beyond it seems dark and foreboding.  We have added stuff to Christ’s message so that The Way isn’t as brightly lit, especially in contrast to other paths that flash their bright neon lights and claim The Way to God. And so, people are gently turned away from the beautiful gate by the cultural forces of progress. “Travel here,” the dark shapes seduce us.

“Life comes from death”, they whisper, stroking our heads to keep us calm, like a parent to a small child.

It is true that life comes from death.

Unless a grain of wheat is . . . dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.

Jesus Christ, the guy 1/3 of the world claims to follow

We sense hints of the divine in the symbol of the life of a flower emerging from the skull of symbolic death, so we blindly walk in that direction.

And so, we allow ourselves to be steered down a path of partial truth, which has always been the path to the most destructive of lies.

There is a profound truth within this metaphor, but blindly embracing all demonic symbolism is a path leading in the wrong direction.

Wake up, friends!

Let the bathwater of unhealthy Christian culture wake you as we toss it in a panic. Ah! Let’s throw out everything that doesn’t reflect the love Jesus showed us as He washed His friends’ feet and hung on a cross! Let’s toss the dirty bathwater of some parts of Christian culture! And may many wake up by this water splashed in their faces as we toss it, friends.

But let’s keep the baby.

A virgin will get pregnant and bear a son; They will name him Immanuel (. . .for “God is with us”)

The Message

Let’s polish that beautiful gate and allow Christ to transform our hearts so they are bright enough, full enough of selfless love that our hearts on fire light the way for others to see the path to God, too.

But let’s stop turning to demons, friends, to show us the path to God.

Let’s worship God instead!

The reasons why we may want to worship a beautiful God who wants to set us free in joy instead of foul demons that will eventually devour us will be discussed in the next couple of posts!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

The Truth About 3 Lies That Are Often Found Deep In Our Hearts -It’s Time To Toss Them

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment
A man holding a stick on top of a sandy beach
Photo by Harsh Aryan on Unsplash

So I went to church the other day.

A kind fellow welcomed me by taking off his hat and bowing to me. Then he slapped me upside the head and told me that I had to believe a political ideology as well before they would welcome me into their church.

They’ll make a show of religion but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.

The Message

I left the church and got into that church through another entrance because I knew how to look for another door. But many of you don’t. Many of you turn away, saddened, looking for another path to God.

“That path is not in the church,” many of us assert.

Have we replaced our primary sense of belonging . . .to [Jesus] . . . with politics…?

Christianity Today

So we stay home the following Sunday and watch TV or ask questions online, wondering, “Where is God?” Our hearts are stirred at night as God tries to wake us from spiritual slumber. We hear stories and wonder, “Maybe?” and then we are again distracted by our lunch and phone notifications.

But our hearts are a black hole that attracts the supernatural, often against our will or our reason.

Let’s dig deep down in our hearts today, friends, and see what we find deposited there in the depths. Like a vacuum attracting dust and debris, cultural beliefs swirl around in our hearts and sometimes settle there even though these ideas are simply filth, cluttering our minds. Instead, we need to find thoughts and questions that are food to fuel our spiritual journeys.

What we find often surprises us when we dig deep, deep down, hitting the depths of the heart.

Here’s some everyday clutter that we dig up and can inspect from all angles before DECIDING, with our MINDS, whether these ideas should be treasured in the depths of our hearts or thrown far, far away into the night, never to wake us again with their mischievous badgering. Sometimes, the wrong thoughts keep us awake at night. What do we toss, and what do we hold onto of the musings deep in our hearts, friend?

Here are several ideas:

  1. When we reach into our pants pocket, we pull out the plastic figurine of Jesus that we’ve carried all our lives. It’s time to toss him.
  2. When we reach into our other pants pocket, we pull out the counterfeit $20 bill we’ve also carried all our lives. This is our experience of church thus far and assumptions based on this experience. It’s time to toss it.
  3. Like the useful “Pensive” in the Harry Potter series, which allows the extraction of memories for in-depth study, we must also extract memories buried deep in our hearts. You also have a memory of another guy who slapped you upside the head, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, before offering you a seat in one of the pews at church. “No thanks,” you said, running from the building and locking the door behind you. It’s time to toss the key to the door you locked.

Why?

A counterfeit Jesus, counterfeit rules, and counterfeit beliefs POINT TO THE TRUTH THAT SOMEWHERE OUT THERE, THERE IS “THE REAL” OF EACH OF THESE THINGS.

No one counterfeits items that hold no value.

The fact that someone bothered to counterfeit these items hints at the truth that the accurate, authentic, valuable versions are out there somewhere.

Don’t turn away from your path to God just because someone slapped you upside the head a bit.

Find the other entrance.