CHAPTER 3
NOT MANY DAYS FROM NOW
We won’t wait forever. God’s great adventure calls.
John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
JESUS (ACTS 1:5)
It’s like nothing you’ve ever gone after before.
MARCUS TO INDIANA JONES
I awoke facedown in a pool of my own blood, completely disoriented. Temporarily unaware of who I was, or what had just happened, I stumbled to my feet and staggered back on autopilot toward the 300-pound rugby player who’d just unloaded his haymakers on my head. He was attempting to evade capture by getting into his car. My body was working, but my mind wasn’t as I shuffled over to him with a drunken man’s swagger, proving that all sense had literally been knocked out of me. By then a crowd had gathered to gawk. The police were called, he went to jail, and it was all over.
Later, in the emergency room, the medical staff stitched up my head. Covered in my own blood, I felt a long way from my safe, cushy, megachurch office insulated with wood-grained shelves packed with volumes of theology books. What was a nice, pasty-white, Reformed, evangelical boy doing halfway around the world getting his head beat in anyway? I certainly didn’t have on my Free Punches in the Face shirt. Lying on that gurney, processing events, I finally came clean about something that had been nagging me for some time. I’d been playing it so safe. Cloistered in my monk cell as a sermon factory, churning out homilies for Christians, I’d not known any danger except maybe the risk of a paper-cut from incessant page turning, or possibly spilling coffee on my crotch. I’d devoured plenty of books about risky gospel ventures that I had no intention of living. If I was honest, deep down all I wanted was people to leave me alone to read more books and drink more coffee.
But Jesus loved me way too much to let me stay that way.
A DANGEROUS PRAYER
Rewind the tape back a few years earlier to a day like any other in Huntington Beach, California. I stood gazing out across the city from my second-story office window of the megachurch where I was a pastor. I could see the rooftops of two other church buildings and I suddenly felt . . . unnecessary. In that crucial moment, in a rare moment of honesty, I wondered out loud why my ministry looked nothing like the apostle Paul’s or anything that I’d been studying in the book of Acts.
Here were some glaring differences between Paul’s ministry and mine at the time:
▪ I sat in a study crammed with books about a Bible I didn’t have the faith to live. Paul, on the other hand, couldn’t sit or stand in a three and a half foot cell lined with urine, had nothing to do except write, and had to beg Timothy to bring him scrolls and parchments.
▪ I was paid a middle class, median income to compose homilies that entertained rooms packed with Christians (who weren’t going to do much other than read the Bible along with me). Paul was unpaid, often naked and hungry due to his commitment to reaching the unreached, only finding time to compose the Bible after prison slowed him down long enough to stand still.
▪ I prayed, with my fingers crossed, for doctors to be “given skill and wisdom,” when sick people asked for healing. Paul laid hands on people and experienced seasons of extraordinary miracles because “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power” (1 Cor. 2:4).
▪ If I’m honest, my ambition was to become well known, lead a gimongous church, hear my own sermons broadcast over the airwaves, and speak at pastors’ conferences as if I was an expert. (At what? Reading? Talking? Drinking coffee?) Paul said, “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation” (Rom. 15:20 ESV). I guess when you plant twenty-four churches in eleven years and run out of cities in which to plant churches (Rom. 15:19), this becomes an actual problem.
▪ I was focused on building my church upwards, increasing our size by increasing our numbers. Paul was consumed with expanding the kingdom outwards by increasing its reach.
▪ I’ll let Paul go first this time. Paul wanted to duplicate himself in others in order to rapidly facilitate a vast number of church plants that pushed back the darkness, expanded the kingdom, and reached numerous unreached people. Which in turn would rapidly duplicate and deploy soul-winning disciples. I just wanted to preach better and read more books.
Despite my love for the library, I was tired of always reading stories about what other people were doing in church history and never living any stories of my own. It was on that day that I did something incredibly dangerous. I prayed a prayer that began to set in motion events that would change the course of my life. “God . . . I’m bored. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Please make me useful, whatever that looks like. I want to experience what the apostles did in Acts.”
You see, I’d signed up for ministry in order to change the world, but somewhere along the way, I’d opted for security over adventure. Adventure may result in cuts and bruises, but monotony kills. Deep down, I was afraid to get outside my office and do anything I’d read about in the pages of Acts. The most amazing thing was that no one expected me to. I could keep collecting a paycheck, and never have to do the riskier things the apostles did, or that men and women in church history dissatisfied with the status quo had done to reach their generation. I’d been pursuing ministry, but was somehow getting farther away from it every day that I stayed cooped up in it. But according to John Wesley, “It is the cooping yourselves up in rooms that has dampened the work of God, which never was and never will be carried out to any purpose without going into the highways and hedges and compelling men and women to come in.”1 When I confessed my boredom to God, I was looking for a lifeline. A. W. Tozer said, “We are bored with God but we are too pious to admit it. I think God would love it if some honest soul would begin his or her prayer by admitting, ‘God . . . I am bored with the whole thing.’ ”2 The Holy Spirit looks down on that individual saying, “Now there’s somebody I can do something with. They’re finally desperate enough to take me at my word.” I’d sat for too long holed up in my office, locked away from the world that desperately needed Jesus, but you can’t change the world from behind a desk. Like Indiana said, “If you want to be a good archaeologist you’ve got to get out of the library!”3
If ministry were a game of chutes and ladders, I had nearly reached the top at twenty-three years old. I was close to getting voted in as the senior pastor of the megachurch that had ordained me. But God had other plans. The prayer I prayed looking out that window was like spinning the dial that began my plunge down the chute, breaking some ribs, knocking loose some teeth. The instruction manual to the game of ministry career advancement was clear. According to human rules, I was supposed to progress upwards toward the pinnacle, but sometimes God calls us away on a long walk down the beach, like he did Peter, to speak with us about the plan for our lives. He doesn’t promise us stadiums of people, megachurches, or radio ministries. Sometimes, we’re handed a call as unglamorous as Peter’s: Love me. And because you love me, feed my sheep. Tend my lambs. Oh yeah, and there was that last bit . . . “Peter, one day somebody is going to take you by the hand and lead you a way you don’t want to go.”4 John sensitively points out that Jesus was referring to Peter’s death, but I wonder if it had a wider application. I wonder how many times in Peter’s life he felt like somebody was leading him where he didn’t want to go. I wonder if he went willingly because the hand that led him to unwanted places had nail prints and had also been led to crucifixion. I’ve certainly felt led down many paths I didn’t want to travel. Without realizing it, I was asking God to take me out from behind my desk to make an impact. I wasn’t even sure if he heard me, but in hindsight, God answered by taking me on a journey to undesired destinations, as my life and ministry began to slowly unravel.
GOD’S NOT IN A HURRY
Jesus telling the apostles they would receive power “not many days from now” implies that God isn’t in a hurry to prep us for our journey. He’s not running in panicked circles like the white rabbit, shouting, “I’m late, I’m late!” God is deliberate and measured in the development of his disciples. If he spent three years preparing the twelve, he’s more than willing to take the time to develop you. If he allowed Paul nearly twelve years from the road to Damascus experience to his first missionary journey, he will spend time developing you as well. That’s why Jesus told the disciples, “Not many days from now . . .” Why not right then? Why not that day? Why not immediately as he was still standing in front of them? As a results-oriented society, we tend to value arriving at the destination rather than valuing the journey. Yet Jesus put great stock in the journey itself, tacking an additional forty days post-resurrection onto the already three-year pre-mission prep period. If that weren’t enough, Jesus gave them ten additional days to stew a bit longer before the power came. Ask the apostles what that ten-day period of prayer and fasting added to their development. It equipped them with a deeply rooted dependency upon the power of the Spirit of God, mirroring Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness in reliance upon his Father.
Ask Paul what perspective God forged in his soul during the eleven preparatory years between the Damascus road and his debut in Antioch. Those eleven years of pent-up frustration from an unfulfilled mandate from the Risen Lord on Damascus Road made Paul like a bull out of the gates when he was finally let loose on his mission. “Not many days from now” reveals that God is equally concerned with the spiritual development of those who are sent, as he is with those he sends them to. We can all be on a journey of preparation with the God of the living. Isn’t that a major component of the gospels—Jesus revealing himself to the twelve along the way? We expect to jump in feet first, reaching the unreached, but what if the Holy Spirit wants you to experience a transformation in transit?
In hindsight, he led me on a slow journey because that was all I could handle . . . at first. If you’ll permit me, I’d like to share my story with you to demonstrate that God didn’t throw me into the deep end, but was patient with me, and developed me as patiently as he did the twelve. In the opening to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, we see Indy’s journey to becoming who he was, when he was just a lad on a train. He encounters everything from his first scar to obtaining the fedora, his first artifact, and his fear of snakes. You don’t become a temple raider overnight.
I can best describe my reluctant journey from Princeton professor to whip-cracking adventurer if you’ll permit me to depart from temple-raiding Indiana Jones for a little bit while I turn to a dragon burglaring hobbit. Like the Tolkien stories, it started off slow, and ramped up from there, because I wouldn’t be any more thrilled than Bilbo Baggins about Gandalf knocking on my door asking me on an adventure. Tolkien tells us, “This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbors’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.”5 Reluctant adventurers aren’t we all.
At the time, I never would have believed you if you’d told me I’d become a serial church planter,* planting churches in a Starbucks in Europe, running open mic nights in a gay coffee house in Los Angeles, or baptizing Mexican gangsters next to a member of the Aryan brotherhood in Long Beach harbor. I wasn’t that guy. You’re probably not that person either. That’s why I’ve written this book.
When Gandalf raps on Bilbo’s door declaring that he’s looking for an adventurer, Bilbo quickly dismisses himself as plain quiet folk with “no use for adventures. Make you late for dinner! I can’t see what anybody sees in them.”6 Gandalf had the reputation of being a troublemaker, who upset the sleepy peacefulness of the shire, responsible for shipping lads and lasses off to the misty mountains on adventures. This is my version of “There and back again,” and maybe this book will get the same reputation, upsetting your cozy hobbit hole existence in ministry. Perhaps you’re a spiritual dwarf, longing for the kingdom that’s rightfully yours, seeking it back from the dragon greedily hoarding everything within the church walls. Perhaps you’re hearing the dwarf song of the misty mountains and something is awakening within you. As Bilbo listened to the stirring music of the past, sung by dwarves around his table, a wish “to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine trees and waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick”7 swept over him . . . longing for adventure.
But Bilbo wasn’t ready. Nobody ever is. Not even the Twelve. Yet what facilitated Bilbo’s transformation was the journey itself. Gandalf called Bilbo an accomplished burglar before he was one. When childless Abram’s name meant Father, God called him Abraham (Father of nations). Jesus called Simon “The rock,” despite Peter’s crumbling under a little girl’s probing questions around a campfire. Who but this same God would call Gideon “Mighty Warrior” as he hid crouching at the bottom of a winepress in fear of his life? God delights to call “those things that do not exist as though they did” (Rom. 4:17 NKJV). We forget that God delights in transforming people. But what facilitates the transformation is the willingness to embark with him on the journey he set out for you. Because the journey is one of faith, God reveals himself, transforming us forever. Jesus promised to transform the disciples, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19 NKJV). But there was a condition attached. The necessary condition of following him first, “follow me,” precedes the promise of what he will bring into existence, “fishers of men.” Because it’s a conditional invitation, if we don’t accompany him on this journey, like Bilbo, we won’t be changed. We won’t become burglars, raiders of a lost art.
What about you? Has God started to take you on a journey to places you haven’t wanted to go? A place where there’s no read-along-storybook guide? No magical chimes telling you it’s time to turn the page? No guarantee that there’s not a scary monster at the end of the book? That’s called risk, and it’s what makes an adventure worth living. It was a risky endeavor when Jesus took twelve men and called them to leave the security of their nets. And he’s still in the business of rapping on your door like Gandalf. Don’t worry. He’ll supply the fabulous fireworks and dreaded dragons.
Besides, Bilbo didn’t gain any confidence until he encountered danger and overcame his fears in the form of three stone trolls. What is it you fear most? For me, the scariest part of Paul’s life was how much time he spent behind bars. Maybe that’s why when God began calling me out of the hobbit hole of my comfort zone and onto the road to adventure, I kept narrowly avoiding landing in jail.
YOU’RE GOING TO JAIL, PUNK!
There I was, holed up in my office, minding my own business. But the Holy Spirit kept knocking and beckoning me out onto the open road, flinging the door wide open so I could glimpse the road before me. I caught a whiff of adventure on the morning air, before predictably turning back to the pages whose intoxicating smells of newly-printed paper and glue beckoned me, siren-like, begging me to never leave. Yet God’s envoys were sent to me like missionaries in disguise. My sending pastor would stand in the doorway to my office, rap his knuckles on my doorjamb, and ask what I was doing that particular day. I’d usually list off studies, books, sermons, and theological problems I imagined I’d been working to solve. His brows would furrow, and he’d pause before asking, “So, you’re not going to be meeting anybody, or getting out onto any campuses doing any outreach?” He can’t remember such conversations to this day, but I’ll never forget them because, in the silence that would follow his departures, the Holy Spirit would speak loudly.
Although the promptings were gentle at first, it was only a matter of time until God resorted to using a metaphoric crowbar to pry me out of my comfortable ministerial burrow. With the force of twelve dwarves bursting through Bilbo’s door, the Holy Spirit crashed my long awaited party to get the journey started with a single phone call. That single phone call commenced a game of peek-a-boo with the God of the first century who wanted me to know that he was still in the business of transforming hobbits into burglars and fishermen into world changers.
On the other end of the phone line was a hysterical mother of two kids from my church’s youth group, one of them future Navy Seal, Chad Williams, author of Seal of God. Chad’s sister had invited a friend to church that had recently been converted to Christianity. Unfortunately, around the same time, that same friend became pregnant. The girl’s shocked parents had confined her to the house until she agreed to abort the baby against her will. Chad’s mom had taken her daughter to go see the pregnant girl, but the girl’s distraught parents refused to let anyone speak with her, so they locked her in the solitary confinement of her bedroom until she had the abortion. Because this behavior sounded abusive, if not illegal, I told Chad’s mom that I’d come down and speak with the parents. Chad’s mom said she’d pray for a miracle until I got there. When I arrived on the scene twenty minutes later, Chad’s mom was hysterically laughing through her tears, excitedly gesticulating, and talking loudly. I confess to thinking she may have cracked under the pressure, but after she slowed down a bit, I pieced together an amazing story as she caught her breath. In frustration and helplessness, Chad’s mom had sat on the curb with her daughter to pray for the friend, “If only we had a megaphone, God, I could yell some encouragement to that scared girl and she could hear me.”
One minute later, a man with a megaphone hopped over the brick wall nearly landing on them both! (This is where the story seems as unbelievable as an angel opening the prison doors so Peter could briskly walk out a free man.)* Shocked, Chad’s mom asked where he had come from. (It had all the makings of the setup of a prank show, except that God did the punking!) Mysterious Megaphone Guy (MMG) said he’d been on the nearby major intersection yelling Scriptures at passing cars through his megaphone when God suddenly told him he had to walk a block, go behind the supermarket, and hop over the wall, and into the residential tract. A few minutes before I pulled up in my car, MMG suddenly jerked up, grabbed his megaphone, and said softly, “I have to go now. I’ll need my megaphone back.” (You can’t make this stuff up). With that, he hopped back over the wall and was gone in a poof of smoke like Kaiser Soze from The Usual Suspects. By the time I arrived, the cops were on their way to arrest some nut with a megaphone. The first officer on the scene approached me with hand outstretched, saying, “Hand over the megaphone.” When I tried telling the story I’d just heard, the cop told me I was lying, and pulled out his cuffs to arrest me. Luckily for me, his partner was a Christian and interceded. I narrowly avoided the slammer. Heaven had invaded earth.
Nonetheless, God’s will was being done on earth as it was in heaven, and nobody could stop him. We were all spectators that day, and I began to ask the same question as the disciples did after Jesus had calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, “Who is this that even crazy mysterious megaphone men obey him?” When it was all over, I drove back to my office, my hands shaking as they gripped the steering wheel, whether from nearly being arrested or my close encounter with the God of Acts, I wasn’t completely sure. One thing I was sure of was that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Upon reflection, I probably would not have prayed for, but against the weirdo who yelled at cars with a megaphone if I’d passed him on the street. But I have since asked myself who is crazier, the man shouting on the street with a megaphone, telling people that they are going to hell, or the person who believes they are, but does nothing about it?*
IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY, AND TRY TO GO TO JAIL AGAIN
Shortly after the incident with the megaphone, I was almost sent to the slammer for the second time. God had been poking me, nagging me to go to the high school campus across the street and start evangelizing at lunch. After procrastinating for a few months, I finally mustered up the courage and went to the classroom used during lunch. On my first day, I met with some Christian high school students who said they would invite their friends if I turned up to preach. Reaching the campus, the dean of the school cornered me. After an interrogation, she threatened to have me arrested if I was ever found on campus again. She was doing her job, and the law was the law after all.
Returning to my study, ready to wash my hands, absolving myself of the responsibility, I couldn’t shake the calling. God whispered, “I’ve got your back if you go back.” I can’t even describe to you the struggle that ensued over the next seven days. I saw myself cuffed and thrown into the back of a cop car. I mentally read the headlines that could be printed. “Weirdo Youth Pastor Arrested for Pestering Kids Receives Restraining Order.” I know. Twenty years on, I hear how it sounds. Looking back on it now, going at all was nuts. Going back was insane. I went back anyway.
Every week.
Without incident.
For three years.
Each time, I passed by numerous security guards who greeted me by name and smiled, but I never saw that dean again. Ever. It was like Jesus’s miraculous slip through the crowd in Nazareth. I was such a punk that I eventually started parking in the teachers’ parking lot every week. God was demonstrating that miracles don’t just happen when you’re smuggling Bibles into communist countries. I was learning that miracles happen whenever we trust God, as we move onto the front line for the kingdom wherever we are. I was also learning that Paul’s enterprise of stepping out was a risky business, as Tolkien warned through Bilbo, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”8 Somehow, I’d thought I could reach the unreached by playing it safe.
LEGENDARY WEAKNESS
When we pick up a biography of a man or woman of God, it’s because we already know that person’s great exploits. We’ve heard rumors of legend, and want to read the story behind the scenes to catch a glimpse of what made their greatness tick. Unfortunately, legends are the only selective tales told that allow us to see the best bits.
When Bilbo matches wits with the Dragon Smaug, it’s the zenith of his journey. Since Bilbo is invisible, Smaug can smell him, but not hear him, and asks what he calls himself. Bilbo taunts:
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air, I am he that walks unseen.
I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.
I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me.
I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider.9
The legend that Bilbo compiles sounds impressive. But he conveniently leaves out the part about being paralyzed with fear and unwilling to start the journey, like we all do. The internal monologue sounds nothing like the dialogue with Smaug, as Bilbo constantly panics, and second guesses his every statement. Maybe this is why the gospels tell us what the Twelve were really like. They got it wrong. They gave up on people (Acts 15:38). They wanted to send people home (Matt. 14:15). They wanted to burn people with fire (Luke 9:54). They drove children away (Matt. 19:13). They got excited about the wrong things (Luke 10:20). They didn’t have much faith. They were afraid of the bogeyman (Luke 24:37). They ran away (Mark 14:50). I take great comfort in the fact that Jesus picked imperfect people to reach the unreached world. Like us, their transformation happened during the journey to every village and hamlet throughout Judea when he sent out the twelve with the seventy-two (Luke 10). During that short-term mission, the apostles got a taste of adventure, venturing out of their comfort zone. Jesus hadn’t allowed them to take any extra provisions so that they could experience utter reliance upon God alone. Like us, they had absolutely no clue what they were doing, but as they preached the gospel of the kingdom, they encountered situations where they were completely out of their depth doing miracles and casting out demons, but God worked powerfully through them despite their inadequacy. Gandalf tells Bilbo that he’ll have some tales of his own to tell when he comes back to the shire from his adventure. Bilbo asks if the wizard can guarantee his safe return. Gandalf says no, but he can promise he’ll be changed.
In God’s eyes, willingness often makes up for our weaknesses. The willingness of the seventy-two was met with power that compensated for their weakness, and they returned singing a different tune than when they’d left. The thrill of adventure tinged their voices, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name!” (Luke 10:17). Their joy was real, despite Jesus’s warning to rejoice more in the gospel itself, than the effects of it. They had been changed along the way. Every serious international traveler will tell you that once you begin a trip, the itinerary falls apart. Whatever goal you had for the journey gets eclipsed when the unexpected twists and turns happen, making your trip a story worth telling. Our plans, after all, don’t always line up with God’s, but he’ll use them or divert them as he wills to accomplish his purposes. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Operation Overlord, also known as the D-Day landings of the Allied forces in Normandy, said, “Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.”10 Your plans will fall apart, just as they did after the D-Day launch. Nothing seemed to work right, but they won the battle because they went, and their going provided an opportunity to fall back on their training. As Mike Tyson so eloquently put it, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” But like I said, getting punched in the face can have a significant upside.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE READY
If you don’t feel ready to spread the gospel, the good news is that you don’t have to be ready. He doesn’t wait for us to be ready because he is. With God it’s always a “ready or not, here I come” affair. I’m convinced that if the twelve apostles applied to the majority of modern mission boards they wouldn’t make the cut. That’s not a slight against the mission agencies that must maintain standards. It’s just that the disciples were unlikely candidates for mission work, and would not likely have met those standards. They would raise every red flag and activate every tripwire that any self-respecting mission board set up. Perhaps Jesus called these men because they were the opposite of what he was going to make them, thereby bringing him more glory. The beauty of Jesus’s training methodology was that he didn’t wait until his servants were ready, but threw them into the deep end when they were still learning to swim.
The secret of how God works is found repeatedly throughout the Scripture in this vital truth: God doesn’t use the able or qualified. He qualifies the unqualified and enables the disabled. Jesus trained the twelve as if he was building an airplane while it was in the air. He looks at the eleven remaining disciples before they’d ever experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and promised (or threatened) them that they would change the world forever. Within months of following him, Jesus sent the seventy-two out to cast out demons, do miracles, and heal in his name when they weren’t ready, because that’s the only way anyone truly learns dependence upon God (Luke 10:1–23). The Greek word for sent in Luke 10:3 is ekballo, which translates to “forcibly expel,” or “fling out” as if it were against their will. Jesus, who invented birds, pushed the disciples from the confident perch of security as if he believed that the only way we actually learn to fly is after flailing our arms in the panicked sensation that we’re falling.
The reality is, if you’ve never fallen, you’ve probably never tried to fly. Jesus threw his followers out into the open air so they could learn about faith, and sometimes that means we have to fail. If you never failed at trying to do something for God, it’s because you didn’t do anything that involved risk. Peter attempted to walk on water. He also followed Jesus to the courtyard when everyone else had fled. Yet after his failure, nobody would have ever used him in ministry again. Nobody but Jesus. The difference between a weed and a flower is a judgment call. Thankfully Jesus is the one who makes the call.
No one is truly ever ready to embark on a mission. At least I wasn’t. When the anchor is pulled up, and the sails are full, it’s with the wind of the Holy Spirit, not our self-supplied hot air. Remember the times when you lay in a broken heap at the feet of Jesus, crying out to him to forgive you, wash you clean, and inhabit you? In those sacred moments, where the cross stands at the intersection of God and humanity, you were brought to the end of yourself. Perhaps that’s why reaching the unreached is more addicting to me than anything else in Christianity. Our great mission constantly brings us to that place of brokenness, insufficiency, and dependence all over again. We taste again that same despair of self, and utter dependence upon Christ and him alone as we did at our own salvation.
It’s not an accident that the one who’d been broken in the most places, Peter, was used by Jesus the most powerfully. Following Peter’s miserable failings in the upper room, the garden, and the courtyard, was a private interview with Jesus as they walked down the beach. During this second interview, Jesus restores Peter to ministry. But in 1 Corinthians 15:5, Paul mentions a secret meeting that Jesus had with Peter before that walk down the beach. It’s not penned by the authors of the gospels, perhaps because it was too sacred, or Peter could never discuss it without breaking down into a crumpled, weeping mess. My guess, however, is that secret first meeting with Jesus was simply about restoring Peter’s soul, not his ministry. Peter had always been a powerful mustang of a man, every ounce of him charged with power. Strong hands, a fierce grip, and powerful shoulders that hoisted a huge net of fish, and all of it failed him because he needed a different kind of power. And he didn’t have it. In his brokenness, Peter finally felt how weak he truly was. And that made the crucial difference.
Peter, from that day on, was like a lost puppy, following Jesus wherever he went, knowing that he needed Jesus more than Jesus needed him.
PREPARE TO BE INVADED
Perhaps God waits until we’ve given up, failed a little, or completely quit before he’s ready to use us. Perhaps that’s because that is the moment we finally surrender. It was Peter’s breaking point that was his turning point. For Jacob, it was his wrestling with the angel, and being broken at the hip. It was in utter defeat that Jacob laid his head on a stone in the desert when he was on the run, and had a dream in which he witnessed heaven invading earth. I believe God wants us to have a vision of the kingdom of God coming to earth. Snapping out of his dream, Jacob cried out, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it” (Gen. 28:16). Imagine looking at the world around you with the awareness that God was working powerfully all around you. The fulfillment of that dream was Christ himself; God hasn’t retracted that ladder yet. Heaven’s invasion of earth is still happening but it starts with him invading your world first. He wants you to know that he’s the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—and you.
God began to invade my space, just as he’ll invade yours. He didn’t start answering my prayer overnight, but he seemed to throw a lever that tripped a sovereign process into motion. My guess is that God is answering your prayers today. You’ve probably forgotten about prayers desperately whispered in confused moments of panic, but he hasn’t. He hasn’t forgotten your earliest dreams and hopes to lift up his name. If they originated with him, he still wants to make good on them. Your story isn’t finished being written yet. As the great philosopher, Anonymous* once quipped: “God’s providences are read like Hebrew letters. They can only be understood by reading them backwards.”
Who knows if having my head beat in has been the gift that keeps on giving. After the beatdown on the streets of Port Talbot, my wife and I started doing risky things. I began a metamorphosis from a sedate, sedentary bookworm, to a frontline missionary with a hunger to impact the world, even if still in my pupa stage. Every weekend we hit the city streets of Wales. On weekends, the streets were dangerous after 10:00 p.m. Alcohol fueled the fighting and raping, and the streets were barricaded to keep people from being run over as they staggered through the streets by the thousands. There’s nothing like it in America, except perhaps Mardi Gras or spring break, but this was a weekly event, not an annual one. Police regularly turned up in riot gear to quell the mayhem. As dangerous as it was, we began to hit the pubs and nightclubs with a video camera. Something about aiming a video camera at people who were out at night to chug beer, dive into a punch up and one-night-stands, and asking them what they believed in God, resulted in them pouring out their life stories through floods of tears. My wife, the hardcore missionary who’d spent time in Thailand rescuing kids from prostitution, began to witness something awakening deep inside my soul. I had no clue what I was doing, but doing something felt better than doing nothing.
Gangs talk about jumping an initiate in by beating them mercilessly, and I’d been initiated into the gang of the apostles. True, I’d been beaten less for Jesus, and more for being a stupid driver. My assailant threw that punch because of his juice-amped emotions, but I walked into that fist out of concern for my witness for Christ. Something about shedding my blood had affected a change in me.11 Being able to say that I bore on my body the marks of Christ Jesus served as a rite of passage, placing me in the coolest secret club since the Little Rascals’ He-man Women Haters Club. Sailors traditionally marked the crossing of the equator with tattoos, but I’d crossed more than a physical milestone. I’d crossed a mental, emotional, and spiritual one. Besides, when you’ve got scars, tattoos are for posers. Evel Knievel said, “bones heal, pain is temporary, and chicks dig scars.”12 Maybe Jesus digs them too when they are borne for his sake. Missionary to India Amy Carmichael once famously wondered about Christians who had no scars like our Master.
Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star,
Hast thou no scar?
Hast though no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned:
Hast thou no wound?
No wound? No scar?
Yet as the Master shall the servant be
And pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole. Can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar?13
Now that I had a scar, I felt ready to risk. The worst had happened, and I’d survived.
Don’t get me wrong—a healthy fear of danger is a sane emotion, but before my beatdown, I was more afraid than I should have been. The fear of danger, rejection, or failure was enough to stop me from risking for the kingdom. Often it’s being afraid of being afraid that holds us back more than anything. Franklin Delano Roosevelt steeled the iron nerve of the American public by challenging them that their own fear was the real enemy, stalling them from taking action. “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” Similarly, Paul mentions the flaming arrows of the enemy, which can be enough to keep us held back, safely behind allied lines, out of range of the archers. To advance, one must take up the shield of faith to extinguish the fiery arrows of fear. Perhaps you’ve felt the tension of feeling challenged and scared to advance at the same time, feeling subjectively scared, objectively unready, but desperately hungry for adventure. Humorist Will Rogers quipped, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” You can prepare endlessly for a trip that you never embark on. You can draw up the blueprints and obsess over a house you’ll never build. You can pray unceasingly for people you’ll never talk to. But at some point, you need to get a passport, swing a hammer, or open your mouth.
I have a theory that every Christian is a sleeper cell waiting to be activated. The Bible stories we read unfolded in real time, yet the central characters were unaware their actions were caught, captured, and recorded in the Scripture. One thing you can be sure of, however, is that when they stepped out with alternating steps of faith and fear, they felt confused and lost. Gideon was scared, yet barreled forth and sawed off the Asherah poles with trembling hands under cover of darkness. When the angel first appeared to Gideon, he was cowed in his favorite hiding place in the bottom of the winepress. He was a fugitive from the Philistines, but the angel hailed, “Fear not, mighty warrior!” It seemed like a joke because Gideon seemed anything but brave. He was brave, however, not because he wasn’t scared, but because he didn’t let fear hold him back from his calling. Doubt mingled with fear and an added dash of confusion has been the purchase price of nearly every square inch of kingdom ground that has ever been gained. This is why God repeated the imperative, “Do not be afraid” to Joshua not once, but five times after giving him the terrifying mission to take the land of Canaan (Joshua 1:9). Joshua was used to trailing along behind Moses, leaving the heavy lifting to the professionals, watching God’s “special servant” strut his stuff on stage. There comes a time for all of us, where God asks us to audition for a supporting role and stop being an understudy. In this life, we get one shot at letting God take center stage and shining the spotlight on him for all the world around us to see. We dare not treat it like a dress rehearsal when we get our big break.
A student who had come to Christ while attending our urban Long Beach church plant got a shock when visiting other churches. She said it was like watching a show, and although she enjoyed watching movies, she would rather be in one. She had played a part in the epic drama. But she was used to the action as a stuntman, not an actor who got all the best lines, but never messed their hair. She had become a daredevil by doing, and been scared every step of the way. Those who bungee jump, ride motorcycles over rows of trucks, and parachute out of airplanes, know the thrill of victory when fear is overcome. God seems to favor those who fear free-falling into his hands, and he picks those who are scared of doing spiritual stunts. We imagine that God uses spiritual daredevils and holy adrenaline junkies but I don’t know if they even exist. I certainly wasn’t one. Gideon wasn’t. Paul wasn’t either when Jesus called him. I think Paul was quite the transformed character. Pharisee of the Pharisees, he boasted, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers” (Gal. 1:14). The poster child of orthodoxy, Paul made the grade to study at the feet of one of the most famous Jewish rabbis in history, Gamaliel. Paul’s great learning hadn’t driven him mad, but that didn’t stop his enemies from accusing him of crossing the line separating brilliance and insanity. Paul would have probably gone down in history as one of the most prolific rabbis of all time, but God wrecked his fancy plans. In his conversion, God transformed Paul so that he was no longer a man more comfortable with ideas than people. He ripped him inside out, from a Princeton archaeology lecturer to a temple raider. He’d been wrecked as a religious leader, but was molded into a loving, compassionate, soul-winning ninja. God has repeatedly wrecked people for vocational ministry and made them dangerous weapons for the kingdom. Ask Wesley, Whitefield, J. Hudson Taylor, William Booth, Mother Teresa, and others who had to venture outside of the four walls of the church to truly effectively reach the unreached. There are people who will spend their lives content with being “Dr. Jones,” lecturing in the Princeton halls about what others have done in the past. But there are also those like the cast of characters above who will risk it all for God’s glory and in a mix of fear and faith, take their place as Indiana swashbuckling gospel adventurers.
Luckily for us, Jesus finds us where we are, takes us as we are, but doesn’t leave us as we are. He doesn’t wait for us to be ready before he beckons us out to walk with him on the water . . . or into the story he’s still writing.
CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
This isn’t a book for ministers. I’ve stopped believing that ministers will change the world anyway. Steve Addison summarized Roland Allen’s point that in seminary, ministers learn the lesson of inactivity.14 Upon graduation, they emerge no more competent to do most of what Paul did in the book of Acts. Many seminary grads who once dreamed of “tearing it up” for Jesus become pulpit pundits, protecting Christian orthodoxy from heresies over pour overs with other theologians, yet are unable to do nearly anything that might change the world, or even the neighborhood they drive through to get to church. With noses buried in texts, they are out of touch with their contemporaries, or as Spurgeon mourned, “at home among the books, but at sea when it comes to men.”15 If you are a minister, I’m calling you out, but I’m also calling you out.
We’ve got to be good at more than just talking. Unfortunately, ministry makes us pretty good talkers, but Paul was able to say that he and his fellow missionaries were men of action, not simply people full of good ideas, or “empty talkers” (Tit. 1:10 ESV). Everything I learned to do on my journey with God to make me effective at reaching the unreached didn’t require me to be in ministry. It was actually a benefit for me not to be in it anymore. All that was required was for me to be willing to do something. Anything. Spurgeon urged, “Brethren, do something. Do something. Do something. While committees waste their time over resolutions, do something. While societies and unions are making constitutions, let us win souls. Too often we discuss, and discuss, and discuss, while Satan only laughs in his sleeve.”16
If you listen closely at church, there is an emphasis on telling stories. But there is a difference between a Christian who can tell stories from a pulpit and a Christian who has stories to tell from the streets. Talking can give a mental release for an angst building up inside of us, and make us feel as if we’ve done the thing we’re talking about. Without actually doing anything, talking is a way of letting off the steam of inactivity. But the more we talk about doing something, the more content we become with talking as the substitute for doing. I’ve interviewed many authors, conference speakers, and thought leaders over the past few years, and I’ve noticed many of them haven’t done what they speak and write about. It is reprehensible when a guy on stage punches the air for impact with clever sound bites in front of a crowd of thousands, but when off the stage, never says those same things to lost people. But it is common. It’s called performing. As an author and field journalist, Ernest Hemingway was disgusted when he saw this type of hypocrisy in authors. He believed he should never write about something that he hadn’t personally done. He wrote about fishing, bull fighting, safari hunting, and war because they were adventures he’d lived himself. He was wounded on the field of battle, survived a plane crash, boxed as a prize fighter, and did more things by the age of thirty than most will do in a lifetime. His potent motto was taken from Benjamin Franklin, “Either write something worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”17 That quote has been written by the doorway to my office to remind me where I should be. Out there. Charles Spurgeon said, “When we hold our church-meetings we record our minutes and resolutions, but the Holy Spirit only puts down the ‘acts.’ Our acts should be such as to bear recording, for recorded they will be.”18
What about you? Are you ready to start your own journey so that you’re ready “not many days from now”? Are you ready to have your life invaded? Are you ready to do things worth writing about? On the other side of the adventure, I pray you’ll hear something like Gandalf’s evaluation of Bilbo, “My dear Bilbo! Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were!”19
Discussion Questions
(For Dr. Jones, the Princeton professor in you)
1. What scares you the most about something God is asking you to do? Why?
2. How has God been rapping on your door in the last:
▪ Month?
▪ Year?
▪ Five Years?
3. What do you intend to do about it?
4. What do you think will happen when you take action?
Adventurous Actions
(For Indiana, the Temple Raider in you)
1. Hand your answer over to somebody else in your group. Have them make an action plan for you based on your answers from the discussion.
2. Follow that action plan for one week.
*I prefer the term Ninja Planter. For the reason why, see www.peytonjones.ninja.
*Even Peter didn’t believe it at first (Acts 12:9)! Neither did the rest of the crew (Acts 12:15).
*For the record . . . yelling at people on the streets with a megaphone . . . not a fan. Good open air preaching that is legit is as rare as bona fide Elvis sightings.
*Don’t search for him online . . . you’ll find he said a lot of things, but it’s not a real person. Had to explain the joke because I threw my editors off. If you care to look, there are multiple jokes hidden in this manuscript. The biggest joke is you bought this book . . .