To experience fully is a blessed thing. 

To stop and truly observe the plot of earth you’re stationed on.  To notice your own skin and enjoy being in it.  Sensitive to a thousand senses all testifying to you at once.  Beautiful senses.  Thankful senses.  See-how-blessed-I-am senses.  Live-in-the-moment senses.  Look-around senses. 

It is in the stopping and simply being that you find out who you really are, whose you really are, where you are and the countless blessings you’ve been lavished with.  It’s in the stopping and being that you behold them. 

Treasure lies in the unexpected, unfathomable simplicity of ‘now’. 

Heaven’s abrupt interruptions to the busy; therein lies our most sacred inheritance. 

Yet the fact remains that we still have the opportunity to enter into the faith-rest life and experience the fulfilment of the promise! For God still has ordained a day for us to enter into called “Today.” (Hebrews 4: 6-7)

Sometimes the best war tactic is simply to hold your ground.  There certainly is a time to fight – to engage in combat, to charge, to advance.  A time when victories are won and great successes are celebrated. 

There are also times when the fight seems desperately futile, the chaos too thick and the wind too wild.  Times when throwing spears and casting bullets seems only to arm the opponent all the more. 

What do you do when every urge is to swing but wisdom calls another order?

“Stand” 

Quiet
Stoic
Resolute
Nothing more

In the midst of the chaos.  Stand.
Profound and effective all at the same time. 

When you release an object cradled in your hand, it will fall to the ground.  Every time.  Not 50 per cent of the time.  Not 99 per cent of the time.  But every time, it will fall to the ground.

It’s called the Law of Gravity.  It is a Natural Law.  Whether you do it once or a thousand times, it will always fall.  So too certain behaviours incite Spiritual responses every time.  There are certain actions that always enlist a predetermined outcome.  They are Spiritual Laws.

Imagine disputing gravity with Newton. 

“Hello Sir Newton.  Well I just have a small matter to discuss with you.  I’ve thought about your law of universal gravitation and I find it quite inconvenient.  It really doesn’t suit me to be bound by this law that all things being drawn by the Earth’s gravitational pull must fall downwards.  I don’t like it, and so I’ve decided not to ascribe to it.  Thanks, but no thanks.  Isaac, you can keep gravity to yourself.”

[A MOTHERS DAY TRIBUTE] 

Secret and hidden, there was a time when only God knew about me.
Crafted and fashioned, destined for His plans.

Before long my presence was felt not only in your being but also in your heart.
Secret and hidden there were your hopes and dreams for my life.

Anxiously and prayerfully you prepared.
Excitedly and nervously you welcomed.
Selflessly and completely you loved.

Hand sewn dresses and picnic baskets, braids, lullabies, costumes and bedtime stories.
I noticed the shades of your nail polish and memorised the freckles and lines on your face.

While every leader would love to have a team of champions, most do not because of the humbling task it is to lead those types of people.

A leader will swing between the selfish desire to have their team tight and right beside them, while simultaneously desiring to release each one into a full and healthy expression of their potential.

The truth is great leaders have teams full of people who are smarter and more capable than they are.

“I guess sometimes to catch a glimpse… of the way things could be, should be, or maybe even are in a parallel reality.  Like peaking through a keyhole into a room you never knew existed; and you realise that doors to beautiful rooms are opened with small, plain, unassuming keys.” 

I scrawled these words onto a page of my notebook on May 12, 2012 seated on a homebound flight after a weekend of preaching in Melbourne, Australia.  I was finally alone with my thoughts.  

My heart was a cyclone inside my chest.  
My mind a psychedelic kaleidoscope of enlightenment, and I didn’t know why. 

While I had been living ignorantly in my personal version of normal, there was a whole other world being inhabited by people who’d understood something greater, which I obviously yet had not.

Emotions are so enormously convincing.  Mostly, they’re our first source of counsel, and extremely competent at defining our responses.  They eagerly take on the roles of judge, jury and counsellor unless otherwise directed.

Did you know that there are other internal counsellors you can call on to advise you in that in-between place?  Other voices who are far kinder to your future and wiser in their perspective. 

At the core of who you are there is a voice that knows which way is up. 
You just have to silence the emotional demands to hear it.

In Ezekiel 20 we witness God speaking to Himself and He says this,

“Then I thought better of it.  I acted out of who I was not how I felt.” (Ezekiel 20:9 MSG)  

If the God of Heaven and Earth needs to filter His responses, then how much more should we!

There are three types of people:

• Those who make and enforce the rules.  
• Those who accept the rules and play accordingly.  
• Those who break the rules.  

I have found that the most beautiful rule-breakers in history were not negative people with chips on their shoulders.  (Certainly history is littered with those ones too.) 

No, I am talking about the ones who brought liberating change to society.  These ones were reluctant and massively underprepared for their task.  They were sure of the cause but uncertain of their ability.

Their convictions outweighed their fears.

Their views and their obedience to act shocked and revolutionised the world.

We would all like to be remembered that way.

In the early years of our marriage, a financial adviser told Sam and I never to take “No” for an answer.  He recommended that we interview brokers and bankers until we found one who could see a proactive solution and help us “make it happen”.  

We have carried this same principle into other areas of our lives and now live with an attitude that says, “No” is not an appropriate response – let’s find a solution and make it happen.”  

When we face our future, whether it is an opportunity or a challenge we must in that moment become very considered with our first response.  

And they fell.   Small beads of crimson divinity.
One by one like grenades of Grace onto parched dust.

Erupting as they exploded across the dirt encasing the foot of a barbaric wooden pole. 

One by one
Grenades of Grace

With each one, a shaking.  The Earth trembled.   The weight of those tiny drops too much for the firmaments.  Earthquakes, tremors, shocks. 

While hell wrenched and twisted under each drop, Heaven reverberated inconsolably, and everything between them was forever rearranged.

He sits in the patio. 
Sometimes at the backdoor. 

He hovers.  He’s always watching, close enough to scoot over when you walk by.  He knows he’s not allowed inside but he tries – every time.  Leave the back door open, just a crack, and he’ll seize the tiniest opportunity to creep inside.   Front feet first, then if you don’t react, he’s right there, inside, nervous, excited, knowing he’s pushed the boundary but he’s keen all the same.

“OUT!” 
He darts back to his post and rests his damp nose over the threshold.  Just until he gathers enough courage to do it all again.  He never quits.  He’s eight years old and he is still trying.  Still optimistic that next time might be the time he’s victorious.  Maybe next time he’ll be allowed be stay.  Maybe next time she’ll relent.

I was thinking this week about intimidation. 
The Black Dog of our humanness.

My husband is running for local council.  For the most part I have remained undisclosed in the campaigning and in the exposure.  I have watched as he has interacted with the community and as the community has interacted with him.  It has been an amazing journey for him already. 

He shared with me a revelation he had about coming out from behind the Sunday pulpit and practicing what he was preaching in a very practical way.  As Election Day approaches, to him it’s not really about winning.  I overheard him telling our daughters last week, “There’s more to winning than winning.” (I know, what a guy!) 

To him it is a door into the lives, homes and businesses of everyday people.  To him it is a way to show them a reflection of the Father’s heart through an everyday Christian who wants to put himself out there to serve them in some capacity.

We were well prepared and expectant for what was to come once Sam made himself a more public figure.   Leading up to it, I was curious to see what would be the dominant theme among the Australian way of thinking. Human nature – what is the basic response of humanity towards leadership?  I knew something would emerge and I was interested to see what that would be.  

It was magnificent.  All He’d made was utter perfection.  Not the least, His final labour was poured fully into a form unlike any prior – a body, a face, an expression of Himself.  Man.  Flawlessness. 

It is good!  Now I rest.  Six days of work.  It is time to rest.  Not because I am tired, but because I can now enjoy the company of Adam together in this paradise.  I rest today, with him – my greatest obsession.  I love him. 

I dedicate a day entirely to being with him. 
I initiate rest in this precious heart of dust.

And when there were two, one of each, man and woman, I walked with them daily, in the cool of the evening.  We conversed, we laughed, we thrived.  

But they soon forgot how to rest. 
Still they have not remembered how to rest.

I often wonder what Earth would say if she could speak.  What would be her account, as the ever-present on-looker?  

She has hosted multitudes and generations. 
She has witnessed events, great and small. 

If she were a great orator, how would she tell the ancient love story between God and his people?

And yet, she does speak. 

Don’t ask me to take you there.  I don’t want to be that person.

Yes, Egypt may have been predictable and easier than this, but only because we didn’t have the pressure of having to think for ourselves.  Egypt was bondage.  No matter how big the giants of the Promised Land truly are, they are still worth facing.  Don’t ask me to take you back.  I’m not that person. 

There is always a go-to-person for going back. 
But it’s not me.

We’re standing side-by-side looking at the same fortified cities before us.  We’ve come together out of the slavery of Egypt.  We’ve seen God prove Himself in impossible circumstances. 

• We walked with disbelief on dry ground through the guts of a raging sea parted to our right and to our left.
• He fed us bread from Heaven, He sent quail. 
• We were thirsty and He caused water to pour out of a rock for us. 
• We saw His presence in the sky above us by day and by night. 

He brought us here, you and me, to the gates of our Promise.  He said, “Go in and spy it out – it’s amazing”.

We did go and we did see. 

But now, it seems that ‘what’ we saw was different between us.

- a tribute to the bravehearts -

Rolling over the hills.  The whispers of secrets told only to the Heavens.

When the safe places are few, when the words are too sore to tell.  When faith holds confession tightly pressed inwards.   When secrets become whispers heaven-bound.  Rolling over mountains.  They are unseen, mostly.   

Not all secrets are bad. 
Some are wise if they’re turned Heavenward. 

Whispered prayers cast upon open skies effortlessly caress imposing and intimidating terrain.  Howling winds of spiritual warfare churning in the open spaces tossed upwards and curling Heaven’s way with each troublesome peak.  If only that summit knew it ultimately served the purpose of thrusting my plea into the strong arms of my rescuer. 

Everyone has an agenda. 

As a Pastor you only have to be around for 5 minutes to meet someone with an agenda.  And while almost every agenda I’ve been presented with is honest and noble and true, I wonder why it should become the sole responsibility of the pastor.  Bundled with care and dumped on my doorstep.

A conviction is actually the responsibility of the very person holding it.  Collectively, when each Jesus-follower outworks their passion and gifting we become a wholesome expression of Christ’s body in the Earth. 

But enough about that – I want to share with you that which is my agenda. 

Yes even I have an agenda.
As a pastor, what am I in this for? 

Leadership requires strength.

Strength is too often miss-understood, miss-represented and miss-used by Misguided Mavericks who consequently give the rest of us leaders a bad name.

What does STRONG actually look like?  Are you strong?  Are you true?  True to yourself and the person God intended you to be?  As a leader, does your strength inspire and empower people?  Or are you one of them?  Misguided?  Harsh not strong?  

Let’s look for a minute at the pseudo strong.  We’ll call them Misguided Mavericks.  (And before you point the finger be careful, we all have the propensity and capacity to stray that way.)  

We all live Monday-to-Friday lives.  In office cubicles, on job sites, in hospital wards, classrooms, courthouses and homes.  We can be inspired in a Church service only to wake the next day needing to separate our Sunday experience from our Monday reality.  We go to work.  We make a living.  We do our shifts, rosters, roles and tasks. 

What does all this mean on Monday? We have to be able to answer one key question,

“What is the why behind the what?” 

Answering that question will settle a great many things in our lives.

Building culture into a team takes time.  It requires a stoic heart that is committed to people.  People!  Beautiful, fascinating, gifted, divine, complex people.

I’ve found that team members, not the leader, are the ones who determine the overall success of the team.  All the vision, strategy and planning in the world will always remain subject to the dominant culture of those carrying it.  

“Culture eats vision for breakfast,” Sam Chand

Even the most eloquently communicated vision will never supersede the values and attitudes of the ones it is entrusted to.  A thriving vision is executed by a team who trust their leader.

There is an old adage that says, “More is caught than taught”.  I’ve found that people want to follow the walkers not the talkers.  They want to know you’ll be willing to lead them from the front as well as in the trenches.