The Moulting Process

I was recently given a video to watch by a good friend. However, it was a video of a preacher, not to mention that he told me it was over an hour. So, I wasn't super excited to watch but Sunday morning, I decided to take a look. Wow! Was I pleasantly surprised. The guy sharing was Todd Bentley of Fresh Fire Ministries. I am not too familiar with his ministry, but apparently he has been used by God for some incredible stuff. (ie. blind made to see, lame can walk, etc...) I have to admit that while I am always blown away by that big Holy Spirit type ministry, I am usually skeptical, if not cynical of the guys that are the upfronters. However, as I listened to this guy, Todd, I was amazed. He talked about the last 6 months of his life in which God shut down the whole miracle, signs, and wonders thing in his life and brought him a period of suffering. He shared very transparently about his struggle with God always using him to heal people immediately, dramatically, and miraculously, but when it came to his own situation God told him it would be a process that would include suffering. In his words, this suffering process just wasn't "in his grid" of thinking. I personally thought it was beautiful. Not that he had to suffer, but to hear his journey of such a paradigm shift in his theological thinking. Such honesty, transparency, and authenticity from someone like this is so refreshing and recharging. I gained some incredible insight from him, like when he shared that God was allowing him to suffer to learn brokenness which would lead to having compassion for people. It helped him learn to focus on the "one," not just the masses. I don't deal with thousands of people, but I too am learning to have an "ear" for the one. I know that one of my "defects" is often to be caught up in surfing the crowd while remaining aloof to the "one." It was cool to be able to apply this principle to the suffering that God had allowed in my life as well. This morning, I asked God to help me discover how to use my life experiences to become more compassionate.

Anyway, I really wanted to share one thought in particular that he shared about eagles and the moulting process they go through. He shared some incredible insights about the moutling process that apply so well to the process that God brings us through when he wants to refine our lives. I will just list them:
~ some eagles go through the moulting process approx. every 7 years
~ some go through it only once in their life
~ when going through the process, the majestic eagle heads down into the valley and finds a cave
in which to live for a while.
~ during the process, their feathers fall out and they get to the point that they actually look like
they're sick and dying
~ at this point, they can only remember what it was like to soar the skies
~ their beaks develop calcium deposits and they have to beat their beaks against the rocks to
break it off
~ they will often go through this process with other eagles, but they can't fly well so they become
scavengers and often fight among themselves.
~ often senior eagles, who have gone through this process before, will have to protect them from
each other
~ they even lose their sight during this process
~ When they get through the moulting process, their wings and feathers are stronger than they
ever were before and the oil sacks in their wings produce in such a way that their feathers
become far more brilliant than ever before.

There are so many correlations to what we go through when God allows suffering in our lives, but I will leave it to your own mental connection.

One thing: Often, when we are going tjrough a time of suffering, we can't understand why God would allow it, but when if we will just trust that God has us and everything in control, we can rest and have hope even in the worst situations and when we get through it, we can know for certain that we will be stronger and more like He designed us to be.

All of this made passages like Psalm 103 an Isaiah 40:31 mean so much more.

Accountability vs. Editability

Well, here I go again. I am going to try to write more. Recently, I have had several friends (new and old) encourage me to put thoughts down for people to read, wrangle, and/or rip up. With that in mind, I will start with a simple regurgitation of something that I heard at one of the most stellar conferences that I have ever been to. About a week ago, I attended the Off-the-map.org conference entitled "Revolution." Now, I know that many have taken shots at the conference from several different angles- "too rad" or "to kind" but I loved it. I met great people and was thrilled to see so many practioners in the "missional" movement from such a wide variety of ages and backgrounds. It was awesome and I believe that God was smiling if not dancing about the conversations it provoked. Enough said about that, I will get to what I wanted to write about now.

I attended a workshop with Joe Myers, author of Search to Belong. He is pretty random if not a.d.d. but gave some great info. One of the best things I took away was an insight about healthy accountability or in his language "edit-ability".

He explained that accountability often has the right heart behind it but quickly becomes "accounting" or simply keeping track of what has been done or what is going wrong. He then cited 1 Corinthians 13:5 "Love keeps no record of wrongs" and asked how we felt taht addressed the most common form of accountability.

He went on to suggest that we approach accountability more as an editor than an accountant.
An editor's job is to help you fix spelling errors and eliminate poor grammar and sentence structure in order to best present your ideas. The editor looks at the picture you are trying to paint and helps you get rid of everything that might hinder or distract the reader from your intended thought or idea.

I guess what he was saying is that by asking people for edit-ability in our lives, we are asking them to help us see the picture of what God desires for our lives nad then to help us "edit" out the stuff that gets in the way. Personally, I find this alot more motivating than being asked if I blew it every week. I think God would want us to look forward to the future of what He wants to do in and through us rather than looking back and living in the guilt of our failures. Not that sin doesn't need to be addressed, but it isn't the focus. Rather God's dream for our lives is and the sin is slached through with the editor's pen as it tries to hinder the overall plan.

Maybe it's semantics, but it makes good sense to me!