173 The God Journey

I think it's about time for a post about the "God Journey," in my opinion one of the hottest moves of God on earth right now.
The way we got wind of it was in such a way that you just know that it couldn't possibly have been coincidence.
Geographically speaking, we're pretty much situated right in the middle of the boonies. And the chances that some American speaker on spirituality should seriously arouse our interest and at the same time visit our neighborhood aren't exactly high.

Yet about 2 years ago, some very close Christian friends of ours invited us to tug along to hear somebody named Wayne Jacobsen speak, whom we had never heard of, but who was supposed to have written a book that was going quite well.
I couldn't go, but my better half did, and when she came back, she was pleasantly surprised about the fact that this guy (Wayne) had actually been talking about getting out of the churches.

Curious, we checked out his website, downloaded his book and you can find the download link to that book - one of the best I ever read - in the sidebar of this blog ever since.

Every now and then I check out TheGodJourney.com, a website on which Wayne Jacobsen presents regular podcasts along with his friend Brad Cummings, and I listen to some of their stuff, and every time I go, "awesome!"

Last week I listened to their podcast entitled, "It's About Jesus" and once again, I thought "awesome!" and I felt more inspired about what I had just heard than I had been for a while, so I decided to listen to some more. In fact, I started downloading the whole caboodle of podcasts and to listen to them from the beginning.

It's not that I was looking for any new source of spirituality of soul food, but I felt as if God was drawing me toward this.
Strangely enough, He had been doing similar things in my life previously and drawing my attention toward comparatively awkward sources of inspiration, such as the Franciscan writer Richard Rohr (Can anything good come out of the Catholic church?), or, as I mentioned recently, Malcolm Muggeridge, among others.

The neat thing is when you find truths that God has shown you confirmed by different sources: brothers and sisters around the world; and you find that He's doing and showing the very same things in the lives of others that He's doing in your own.
And one of the truths I find reflected in Wayne and Brad's talks, for instance, is that it is Jesus building His church, His Ecclesia, His living body of called-out ones from among all sorts of different areas and walks of life, and not we ourselves. In other words, God's part of the action is not only far greater than what we sometimes give Him credit for, or than what some people would grant Him the permission for, not only greater than anything we could ever possibly imagine, but it is, in fact, lo and behold, also greater than the supposedly so important part that we are doing.

And that may come as quite a shock to some of us who perceive themselves as the greater doers.

It's an old truth that in theory I've grown up with: "Let go and let God;" but which has taken me decades to actually start putting into practice.

Some of the stuff they're saying I've been taught for decades. But I guess it's one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit to bring "all these things to our remembrance" even if it is via unexpected sources sometimes...

"Coincidentally," (if there ever was such a thing), the podcast I was listening to today was all about the emotional hype that can be produced during religious happenings (in this case it was about the death of Pope John Paul II a few years ago), and how that can sometimes be a good thing in some people's lives, but it can also be quite misleading, all of which sort of goes hand in hand with my recent lessons I learned from my brush with Mormonism...

You'll find a lot of similarities between some of the thoughts expressed in this blog over the years, and those shared on the God Journey, like the idea of taking God out of the box we sometimes like to stick Him in: our church, our group, our self-made confines for Him and His capabilities that we make up in our own minds... As long as we think our box is IT, we actually fail to see Him, and we forget that all we really are is little diamonds of dust, and that He is the light that makes us shine.

How long has it been since you've seen sunshine in your brother's eyes?

Well, I'm afraid the only way we're going to get back that shine is by focusing on the light, not by feverishly trying to shine in our own strength.

For passing on a bit of their shine and light of the experience of what they've learned in their own lives and on their jorney with God, I would like to thank Wayne and Brad...

Thanks guys, for being (part of) the Real Thing!