LeakeSpeak

I have an ever-growing desire to see followers of Christ everywhere be the Church, rather than going to church. We were meant to be the hands and feet of Christ, not sit passively in a pew! That’s why I loved the analogy developed in the article below. What would it take for us to see more spiritual lions freed from captivity?

Thanks to Frank Viola for sharing the following by Milt Rodriguez:

Lions Set Free

by Milt Rodriguez

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not be entangled with the yoke of slavery again.” Galatians 5:1

A friend of mine recently told me about a conservation group in Zimbabwe that is taking captive lions and rehabilitating them back into the wild.

This is a difficult, four phase process, but they are having success with it. The rehabilitation process has many snags involved because of the effects of captivity on an African lion. When lions are bred and raised out of their natural habitat, some very abnormal patterns begin to develop. In short, they become domesticated. Yet lions were born to be wild.

In captivity, the lions basically forget that they are lions. The forget how to hunt. They forget how to live in the wild. And they forget how to live in a pride. The “pride” is the name for a community of lions. Lions are by and large social creatures and do not do well as loners.

The Effects of Captivity

You and I were born (again) to be spiritual lions. That’s who we are, but we have forgotten our true nature because of our captivity in the religious system. Captivity has conditioned us to believe things that are just not true. We have become something less than our true calling and destiny because of this conditioning. We have become domesticated.

We have become isolated pew warmers; a mutated race that sits and listens instead of participating and functioning. The clergy/laity system has made us passive and spiritually lazy. In other words, we have sold out our birthrights. Just like Esau we have sold out for the comfort of a bowl of lentil stew, that is, our warm and comfy pews. We no longer wanted to bother with functioning as members of the Body of Christ, so we sold out and instituted the clergy/laity system.

We Have Forgotten How to Hunt

This is definitely one of the most important aspects of a lion’s life. Without the act of hunting, how will you eat?

How will the pride eat?

We have forgotten how to hunt for our own food. Part of our conditioning has been that everyday (or every Sunday!) someone opens our cage and throws us a piece of meat. This bypasses the whole hunting process.

Who is this person that throws in that piece of meat? Where did he get it? Apparently, he went and hunted for it himself. But that is not my prey! And I never had to hunt for it myself.

Hunting is much more than just killing an animal and then eating it. There is the encounter of the hunt itself: finding the right place and time; having the right equipment; getting very quiet; smelling the prey; stalking the prey; taking aim, etc. Sometimes you come up empty handed, but the actual engagement is the thrilling part.

As believers, our food is Jesus Christ Himself! Not just teaching and doctrine about Christ, but the very Person and experience of Christ. You need to hunt for this “food” yourself. Sharing someone else’s food is alright at times. But there is nothing like you going out on your own “hunt” and capturing some new revelation or insight into your Lord. This is exciting. This is discovery. This is how you were born to live!

But then what? What do lions do after they have captured the prey?

They bring it home and share it with the pride.

As I said before, lions are very social creatures and they live in a pride. But in captivity there is no hunt and there is no pride. Lions are thrown their food everyday and they do not live as a pride. They are just individual lions living a mutant life of individualism.

A lion in captivity never has to hunt for his own food. He becomes lazy and complacent. He actually believes that this is normal. He believes that someone else is responsible.

We Have Forgotten How to Live in the Wild

“Because we do not regard the things which are seen but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” II Cor. 4:18

There are two kinds of realms that exist. There is the unseen realm (or the eternals) and there is the seen realm (or the physicals). Both of these reams exist together at the same time.

One realm is spiritual and unseen. That is, it has no physical substance or what we would call matter. It has no size or dimension, and it exists without time or space. You could say that this spiritual realm is totally “other than” the seen, physical realm.

Of course, we know that the seen physical realm does have matter, energy, space, time, and dimension. Science tells us all about electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, and molecules. We seem to know a lot about the seen realm. But the scriptures tell us that this realm is only temporary.

It is the unseen realm which is eternal, and yet, we really don’t know much about that realm at all. How do we live in that realm? How do we live in spirit?

The Creature of Two Realms

As lions, we are called to live in two realms at the same time. But we should live mostly in the unseen realm. This is the “wild” for us. And it is mostly unexplored. It really is the “wild.” It is our natural habitat. And we can never be fulfilled with anything less. And yet, because we have forgotten who we are, we have become comfortable in captivity. We have become comfortable in the seen realm. We actually start believing that the physical realm is everything and then we start investing our lives into it.

Yet we have a Lord who is both Lion and Lamb. He is definitely gentle. But make no mistake about it, He is not tame! He is as wild as they come and the wild realm that is our home is inside of Him (Eph. 1:3).

But our natural habitat is not lived alone. This is a place of community. This is the place of the pride.

We Have Forgotten How to Live as a Pride

The “pride” is the social unit for the wild lion. They do not live alone. They interact in small groups know as prides.

Dear believer, a very important part of your natural habitat is the spiritual “pride.” This has been lost to us as well. Lions in captivity don’t live in prides. That is a special feature only found in the wild. When you discover that you are already free and begin living in the other realm, you will see the need of community life. This wild life is a shared life. Shared with your Lord and shared with His people.

But we are not used to sharing our lives with others. We have been isolated (held captive) for so long that we have forgotten that this is just the normal life for wild lions. In a true pride, you all share your food, share your joys, share your sorrows, and share everything in life with one another.

The big question is: how do we get to this place of freedom? How do we remember how to hunt? How do we remember how to live in the wild? How do we remember how to live in a pride?

Our great God has already provided a solution to this situation. And this solution was in force as early as the first century.

God’s Solution: Walking with Lions

As I told you in the beginning of this article, there is a conservationist group in Zimbabwe that is successfully rehabilitating lions back into the wild. But how do they do it?

They take the young cubs for walks everyday in the wild. An experienced lion “handler” (not trainer) will take a cub on long walks everyday to introduce the young lion to life in the wild. Eventually, the lion’s natural instincts will begin to kick in. They will begin to respond to their natural prey and eventually begin to stalk them. Then, one day, they will learn to hunt for themselves. The lion handlers will also introduce them to a pride in the wild so they can be socially integrated.

God does the same thing with His people. He re-introduces His “lions” back into the wild by the use of “handlers.” These are men and women who are called, prepared, and sent by Him for this difficult task. They do not become caretakers of the believers, but their job is to be re-introducers. Then the believers re-discover their spiritual instincts and habitat that has been long forgotten in captivity.

We can see these people at work in the first century. They were sent out by God as itinerant apostolic workers (or church planters) to lay a foundation of Christ for the assemblies of believers. Their job was to work themselves out of a job. Peter, John, Paul, Barnabas, Titus, Silas, Timothy, and others did this work or re-introducing God’s people to the wild. Then they would leave them on their own to live as wild lions! Every one of these workers had already experienced true “pride life” for themselves and knew about the hunt, the wild, and the pride by personal experience.

In the Zimbabwe program, the handlers have less and less contact with the lions. The goal is to completely release them to the wild, not to control them and keep them domesticated.

Christians are leaving the religious institutions in droves. They are seeking more reality, a deeper spirituality, and freedom. They are being set free from the captivity of the religious system and it is a beautiful thing to see. But that creates an altogether different problem.

Now that all of these believers are being set free from captivity, what will happen next? How will they now be re-introduced to the wild? How will they remember how to hunt? How will they be introduced to the “pride” life?

God’s own rehabilitation program must be the answer. We need to pray that God will raise up many “handlers” who have been called, prepared, and sent to walk with the lions.

You are a lion and you have a divine right to be free in the wild with His pride!

This has been one of our church planting team’s biggest prayers lately. Satan and his works of evil hide in darkness, and sin loves to remain undercover. As long as the works of the enemy remain undetected, they can go on without interference. As soon as they come to light, they can be dealt with. We can pray specifically against the works of Satan once we see what he is up to, and sin’s power is dealt a death blow when sin is revealed to others.

God is out to destroy the work of the devil:

He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devils work. (1 John 3:8)

So we are praying for every hidden thing to come to light. As we have been praying this prayer the past few weeks, we see lots of sins in our own lives coming to light. This has been very positive, because a number of us are finding ourselves being able to turn from things that have been hindering God moving through us. We are praying the same for those we are discipling.

We pray this prayer on a bigger scale, as well. We want God to expose corruption, greed, deceit, stealing, and any other evil in government, businesses, and so forth. We want the tactics of the enemy to be evident, so that they can be torn down. God has been leading us to pray against powerful, entrenched works of the enemy here, such as fear, drunkenness, and sexual immorality. Every new thing that comes out is weakened, and more and more as we and others pray against them.

So may every hidden work of Satan come to light! Would you join us in praying this prayer? What would happen if you prayed it for your own life and world?

This is a large assembly in our town on Mexican independence day, September 16. It took place at the explanada, which is an open parade ground area next to our main government building. Many of the schools in town were there, uniformed and in formation, as were the town president and many other government officials:

The assembly at the explanada was followed by a parade through town. Here are a few photos from the parade:

This I was interested to learn, since we are finding that simple house church fellowships seem to be an effective model for our work in Mexico. I’m not trumpeting house churches as the only good church model, because it’s clear that God is working through all kinds of models. House churches do have some upside, though.

Check this out:

The following characteristics summarize Luther’s “Order of Divine Service” as to the “how” churches should be organized.

Self-organized

Home-based

Lay led

Full sacramental life

Stewardship and social ministry

Simple catechetical instruction

Ideal context for loving accountability after Matthew 18

“Form and Order” are not imported but emerge spontaneously from community life.

From Tim Thompson via Guy Muse.

Apparently, Luther would have liked to see things happen this way, but felt at his time that he lacked the necessary leaders and that people weren’t into it. If Luther were alive today, I wonder if he would be trying to lead a reformation in the direction of home fellowships and lay leadership? What do you think?

We have taken a number of photos the past 2 or 3 months that haven’t made it onto the blog. They’re mostly of off day activities, because we don’t get to take a lot of photos of ministry activities for a variety of reasons. I’ll go ahead and share some of the photos, probably in several installments. These first ones are photos we took during summer short-term mission trips.

One day, while mission trip participants were at the tourist markets, Lauryn and I walked down to the main market of our state’s capital, where tons of locals do their shopping. We had lunch at a small torta (sandwich) stand that was tucked into a row of shops:

This is the central park and government building of the capital of our state. We were there during a large annual festival, making that particular week the busiest tourist week of the year:

On an off day, we took our summer interns to see our state’s professional baseball team play:

And here’s a bonus photo of Jenna:

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.

1 Peter 2:13-19

God has been nailing me with this passage lately, speaking to me about my attitude towards all kinds of different authorities. He has commanded us to submit ourselves to every authority instituted among men. In the second paragraph, note that He doesn’t just command slaves to submit to good masters. Even harsh masters are worthy of submission. Ultimately, it is God that we are submitting ourselves to when are subject to those over us.

I have recently learned that submission is not the same thing as obedience. Obedience is our outward actions, but submission speaks to our heart attitude towards those in authority.

To paraphrase Peter a bit in today’s terms, I think we can say: “Honor every authority above you, including every authority in the government, including those you don’t like or with whom you completely disagree!”

In this presidential election season, another good post regarding our attitudes as followers of Christ has been provided by Brian Bailey. Here is an excerpt:

At some point, though, we have to take responsibility for the tone of politics. Even though our discourse is largely a reflection of what we hear from the parties and the media, why should we descend to that level? Why can’t we do better? If you are fed up with how politics is practiced, let’s start changing how we practice politics.

The candidate you support is motivated by political calculation and a desire to win just like his opponent. He has compromised when he shouldn’t have, ducked when he should have stood up, and made many mistakes (and will continue to do so). Like all national politicians, he is a flawed man surrounded by flawed advisors. The nation’s problems will not be solved by his election, but he can and hopefully will makes things better, improve the political process, and appeal to our better natures.

The candidate you oppose is not stupid, senile, dangerous, different, or corrupt. He loves this country and has served it most of his life. He will defend our nation with honor and always do what he thinks is in the best interest of America. He does not deserve to be mocked, belittled, or hated. The snide and snarky only serve to make intelligent debate between reasonable people impossible, while escalating the smack talk arms race.

There are endless arguments to be made for and against each of these candidates on the issues, but why do we have to demonize and deify them in the process?

Good words, don’t you think? If you don’t agree, I challenge you to consider what it is you disagree with and why.

I encourage you to read Brian’s complete post. I commend him and others who are taking a stand this election against the slew of negativity all too often coming from Christians. If you think the message of honoring our leaders is for Kingdom people, then do your part to positively influence those around you.

In Mexico, kids enter kindergarten at age 3, and it lasts for 3 years. So Molly entered her first year of kindergarten this year, while Lauryn is in third year. We are blessed to have a school just a couple of blocks from our new house in town.

This being my day of rest, I just got back from seeing Lauryn and Molly during recess and buying them a snack. They each had a huevo con chorizo (scrambled egg with spicy sausage) taco and a cup of pineapple juice. Lots of parents come at recess to feed their kids and see them for a little bit, and the school sells food.

This is the covered school yard during recess:

Here are Lauryn in Molly in their school uniforms:

A week ago we posted a video greeting to our home church in Colorado on YouTube. For those who didn’t get to see it, here it is:

Thanks to Alan Knox over at The Assembling of the Church for linking my post ‘What discipleship is not‘. In the comments, Alan adds these three thoughts to the discussion:

• It is not education (information).
• It is not one-sided.
• It is not accidental.

In his post, Alan shifts the discussion to what discipleship is, and he asks the following questions:

What is discipleship? What role does God play in discipleship? What role does the disciple-maker play in discipleship? What role does the one being discipled play in discipleship? Can there be a blurring between the disciple-maker and the discipler? Is that type of blurring good or bad?

What is the goal of discipleship? Do certain activities lead to that goal? Are certain settings more conducive to reaching that goal? Is discipleship only one-on-one or can someone disciple a small group or a large group? What role does teaching play in discipleship? How is education related to discipleship? What about other spiritual gifts?

These are good questions; important ones for us to be asking if we are to effectively disciple others. In the comments on Alan’s post, I shared the following thoughts in response to his questions and the comments of other readers:

I’ve become a big fan of life-on-life discipleship (though other modes exist), and I think that one important type of discipleship relationship is that of a believer helping a less mature believer grow in obedience to Christ. I also like the thought about blurring the lines between discipler and disciplee, though.

Something I have been thinking about lately I’ve been calling the “round table of discipleship” for lack of a better term. I serve with a team of missionaries, several of whom are older than me. One man, the oldest, has probably the most life experience and overall spiritual maturity. He can teach the rest of us a lot. The leader of our team, much younger than this man, can learn from him but can also teach him some things about effective cross-cultural mission work. Everyone around me, younger or older, can teach me things in various areas, and in certain areas I can help even those who have more experience than me with a thing or two. So there is a lot of give and take, not a clear-cut hierarchy.

Do you have any thoughts about what discipleship is and/or what discipleship is not that you would add to this discussion?

We need some clear idea of what discipleship is (even if we have different ideas) in order to effectively make disciples, thus fulfilling the Great Commission.

This post is for anyone who, like me, has been overwhelmed by your email inbox. I keep two inboxes, one for work and one for personal stuff. My work one doesn’t usually pile up beyond about 150 messages (which still takes several hours to clear out), but I finished a busy summer in August with over 1700 messages sitting in my personal box (no, I’m not that popular–it included lots of Facebook notifications and things I subscribe to). For friends and family who wonder why you sometimes write me and then never hear back, this is why.

Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero series ended up being very timely. His tips have helped me keep my email somewhat at bay for the first time in years. Here are a couple of simple things that have helped the most:

1. More than anything, a new attitude towards my inbox. Rather than letting things sit in there forever, I try to only look at a message once and then do something with it.
2. Absolving myself of the guilt of not having returned messages friends and family wrote me six months ago. Not that I didn’t want to return those messages, but I had to accept that I was never going to get to it, and keeping those messages sitting in my box was hindering me from responding to the new stuff coming in from friends and family.
3. I dumped Microsoft Outlook and moved to Mozilla Thunderbird as my new (free, open source!) email client. Microsoft isn’t to be blamed for my email woes, but Thunderbird does have a couple of plugins that have really helped out, and I have also learned Thunderbird’s features and shortcuts better than I ever learned Outlook’s. The jury’s still out, because it’s a little quirky with a couple of things, and it could be that Outlook can actually do everything I’m now doing with Thunderbird, but open source provides a couple of advantages you just don’t get with Microsoft.(By the way, I’m continually amazed at how many of my missionary friends still do all their email online and don’t even use an email client like Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. My advice: Get an email client! Once you do, you’ll wonder why you ever went so long without one. Picture not having to wait for an entire web page to load in order to read each message and never again having internet hiccups make you lose a message. Download all your email to read offline, quickly read it by click, click, clicking on the different messages, and then send all your new stuff at once as soon as you go online again.)

If you’re in need of an email rescue operation, check out the Inbox Zero series and see what Merlin’s advice can do for you.