“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God may open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; in order that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.” (Col 2:2-5)

Paul’s words here strike me as especially relevant today after being briefly detained and denied entry into the UK this past Friday.  I feel called to invite others too into Paul’s posture—especially after seeing how a dear Mexican friend, Evaristo faces deportation over legal details (see below).

Paul writes as someone who has done serious jail time for crossing boundaries for the sake of the Gospel.  He shows true humility, calling for devotion to prayer, alertness and thanksgiving “that God may open up to us door for the word,”

This past month Gracie and I have traveled freely through the Euro zone, responding to invitations to teach and minister in Stockholm, Riga (Latvia) and Tallin (Estonia).  We assumed there would be no problem leaving France for the UK last Friday.  We have done this fairly often, though not always without difficulties.  We were heading over to celebrate Anna’s 17^th birthday with friends, and I was scheduled to preach and lead a Kingdom Theology Taster Day in London on Sunday.  Now we are reminded that doors that open to us (and others) are fragile and need to be approached even more prayerfully.  We have an adversary who seeks to thwart our movements—refusing us entry or even casting us out.

Getting on the Eurostar train from Paris to London involved first going through French immigration in the Gar du Nord train station in Paris, where National Police officers stamped our passports as we officially left France. Then on to the UK border, where a Caucasian UK Border Agency official chatted amiably with us, looking like she was going to let us in.  Suddenly, though, a wary look came over her face, and she started asking questions about our legal status in France.

Since every time you re-enter France from outside the Euro zone you are permitted three months as a tourist, our family has coordinated our trips to comply with this law.  Many people who are here less than a year do this without problems.  The eager official cited some technical illegalities about what we were doing, took our passports to the French police, and returned to tell us that the French would not guarantee us re-entry on Sunday night, so consequently she would not admit us but was turning us over to them.  She couldn’t tell us what they would do with us.

So there we waited where the officials had left us for three hours, beside long lines of passengers who were successfully going through British immigration in this in between countries zone where our future felt suddenly really uncertain.  I was texting friends in the UK and France about our dilemma, asking for prayer, when I received an encouraging text from Gilles Boucomont, our pastor friend here in Paris. “As a French citizen and in the name of Jesus I welcome you onto this territory.”

Just then another UK Border official, an Afro-Caribbean woman who herself migrated to the UK took over the process, escorting us into a room to be fingerprinted.  She was amazingly friendly and surprisingly critical of what was happening.  She even let us take pictures of the process before turning us over to the French “Police Nationale”.

The French official, looking very serious said: “So, we have a problem.” We told him that we thought we were in compliance with the law, and that we had been leaving the country every three months since we arrived last August.  He searched our passports and found all the stamps that showed we’d left France and re-entered as stated.  He said: “OK, no problem,” showing us that based on our last stamp we still had 9 days before three months was over (affirming what we’d been doing).

We had an interesting conversation about immigration politics, where he expressed his grave concern about France being overrun by immigrants.  “Look, Monsieur Obama has expelled 400,000 illegal immigrants this past year— and we only 3,000!” He corrected me when I used the word “deporté”, which for the French refers to French Jews and others being sent off to their death in German concentration camps during WWII.  “Expulsé” is the word he said, which didn’t sound any nicer.  Finally he gave us back our passports, telling us to get extensions at the Prefecture for the rest of our stay, and had another officer usher us back into official France.  Yesterday at the Prefecture I learned that the only way to get an extension, is to leave the country as we were trying to Friday.

Fortunately, I leave midweek for nearly three weeks in Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, and Gracie joins me next week in Sydney.  I am reminded of what a gift it is to be welcomed across borders, into new lands and communities for the work of Jesus’ Kingdom.  I am also grateful that we can experience even to this small degree what it feels like to be strangers and aliens, risking deportation– since for so many years we have worked with illegal immigrants.  I’m also reminded of how critical it is that we have people praying for us so barriers are removed, doors will open and ministry can go forward.  We appreciate your intercession.

On another front back in Burlington, WA on this same day, May 11, I learn that a young Mexican man we have been advocating for is facing deportation.  I include my colleague Chris Hoke’s update on him below and ask for your prayers.

“Evaristo Solano is one of the most hopeful stories we at Tierra Nueva have encountered in our ministry with both undocumented migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, and with Chicano gang members.  Five years ago, after losing his big toe in a firearm accident with delinquent youth, Evaristo lost his high school wrestling opportunity.

He began to drink, heavily, like his father. When in despair he robbed a corner market for a case of beer, Evaristo landed in jail with a theft felony charge. Just before being handed over for deportation, he came into relationship with us as jail chaplains, and things began to change. He came to renewed faith, received healing in his leg and foot, and we connected him with an immigration attorney.

Through the last five years, Evaristo has seen miracle after miracle: getting immigration bail dropped to just about nothing, getting back into university as a minority student with a scholarship, moving into our ministry community building, getting married to his wife Alicia, having a son Alex, beating one immigration court after another even when our lawyer said he was done for, and all the while coming into relationship with God as the Father he never had.

Through these massive changes, a wide community of support has come around Evaristo and his family. Professors, church members, pastors, parenting class teachers, artists, counselors, tattoo removal clinics, former enemies, and more.

In the last year, he has become an example of hope for many other young men trying to imagine leaving the gang life and becoming the kinds of fathers they want to be. He was about to get his green card, as a resident in the U.S., this month.

Then, possibly due to current anti-immigrant sentiment and political pressure in the country, the immigration officials surprisingly rejected his overwhelmingly positive application for status. Now he could be deported and separated from his wife and son permanently.

Please help us pray in these three ways regarding Evaristo’s case:

1. By blessing the county prosecutor, Erik Pedersen, who has the power to go back and vacate (forgive) Evaristo’s felony five years ago, when he stole the beer from the corner store.  Even the store owner has reconciled with Evaristo and is on his side–but the prosecutor is not moved.  Yet.

2. By praying for more of the Holy Spirit–the defense Counselor–to push with us in our appeal case this month. It will take legal savvy, lots of paperwork, and God providing the funds from among his people to cover many of the legal fees ahead.

3. By covering Evaristo and his family in prayer. His heart, his identity as God’s prized and adopted son, is at the heart of this struggle. When Evaristo is closest to his Father, living out his calling as a son of God, reconciling with each person in his past and present, the Enemy has less hold on his life.

There are high calls on Evaristo and Alicia’s lives, and on your as well.   May God make us prayerful, alert and thankful, “opening up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ.”

I have been seeing God at work in beautiful ways these days.  Two weeks ago we prayed for a 28-year-old French woman who had suffered for 20 years with pain from scoliosis (she had a 14% curvature of the spine).  She was surprised when she felt something move in the middle of her back as we commanded her spine to straighten in Jesus’ name.  And then the pain went away completely.  The next day her doctor told her that her spine was completely straight!  She even has x-rays to show the before and after.

Last week I traveled to Clermont-Ferrand in the center of France, 3 ½ hours South of Paris for some speaking and outreach.  The first day I went out with my pastor friend Jean-Paul Fritz and two people from his church for their weekly Thursday outreach to the homeless.  We walked through the city and whenever we came to a homeless person, Jean-Paul and his team pulled out a bag from their cart with a freshly-made sandwich and bottle of water, offering it to the person.  They knew nearly everyone by name from having done this for over a year, and everyone gratefully received and talked with us.

We asked each person if they wanted prayer for anything, and nearly everyone said yes.  We prayed for a number of people and ended up in a park on the outskirts of town that was full of homeless men and women with their dogs.  They were drinking beer and many were playing bocce ball.  I talked with a man in his early 30s named David who lives in his car, moving from place to place with other homeless people.  He said he didn’t believe in God, but was eager to talk about faith and life, and said he really appreciated the way we talked with him.  Jean-Paul is bringing him a Bible as he was open to read about Jesus, whom he did not know at all.

The next day I visited the city jail with Jean-Paul, one of the chaplains there.  I led a Bible study on Psalm 23 and Luke 15, focusing on Jesus as personal Shepherd-Advocate who cares for an d protects.  They were amused and seemed genuinely moved by the story of the Shepherd who leaves the 99 to seek and find the lost sheep, who was doing nothing worthy of being found and got carried home to a party in his honor.   The ten men who attended were mostly French.  They were humble and extremely open.

I don’t know why I decided at the very end to tell the story of a man whose hand was broken by the police when he was resisting arrest years ago in Mount Vernon.  I told how he cursed the police out loud throughout my jail Bible study, and how I sensed God urging me to offer to pray for him, to show him that Jesus had nothing at all to do with the police violence, but wanted to show he loved him.  I told how the man had accepted prayer in front of the other inmates, and how I asked Jesus to undo the damage done by the police, and learned the next day while visiting someone else that his hand was healed overnight.

A French inmate who had fought in Bosnia and Iraq came up afterwards.  He told me that the police had broken his hand that year when they arrested him.  He asked me if I could pray for Jesus to undo what the police had done.   He showed me a long, swollen scar that extended 6-8 inches up his wrist.  I prayed several prayers, asking him each time if he felt anything changing.   But there was no letup in the pain.  I then asked him if he had forgiven the flic (police officer).  He hadn’t, but was totally willing to and repeated a prayer after me, forgiving the officer for breaking his wrist with a baton.   We prayed, asking God’s Kingdom to come right then and there in his wrist as in heaven, then I asked him if he noticed any improvement.  He said he felt heat all over the scar and could no longer feel any pain.  That afternoon we saw another inmate healed of pain in his middle back.  Jean-Paul is seeing God confirm his teaching and one-on-one visits with inmates with signs of healing and other answers to prayer.

The last few days I’ve been going to the Louvre (art museum) with Luke.  I sometimes go when I’m feeling spiritually hungry, hoping to be fed by contemplating some of the amazing Christian art.  Yesterday I was moved by Lotto’s Jesus advocating for the adulterous woman (first below),  and Jesus’ healing the blind man of Jericho by Poussin (second below), and by Lorenzo’s depiction of Jesus carrying the cross (third below)

May you experience more of Christ’s Kingdom, on earth as in heaven as you step into your inheritance as a beloved one.

When Gracie and I moved to Honduras in July 1982 the country was considered the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Wars raged in the region and death-squad violence created a climate of terror. Over the last 30 years we’ve witnessed the power of God’s love at work in individuals and communities, bringing visible relief through increased production, water projects, improved health, reconciliation between enemies, discovery of the good news in Scripture and healing. Right now the “not yet” of Jesus’ Kingdom has been in my face as violence increases in a climate of near anarchy. I have been accompanying one of my closest friends, Angel David, from a distance by phone as he’s walked through terrors and deep sadness in this seemingly interminable valley of the shadow of death.

The last six weeks in Honduras have been some of the darkest after a prison fire in our department capital Comayagua on February 15 burnt over 400 inmates to death. The next day Tierra Nueva’s past president Paco and his wife Gloria buried their 33-year-old son Edwin who suddenly fell sick after a flare up of aplastic anemia that had been in remission for 13 years. Back in 1999 Tierra Nueva had organized a big fund-raiser to pay for medical treatment and prayer campaign, which brought this disease into remission… until last month.

In the midst of all this pain it has become once again clear that God’s preferred way of coming close to human suffering is a mediated way—through human beings who themselves come close: Jesus, me, you—Christ’s body, the church.

I was in the UK teaching a course on missions to 50 or so graduate students at Westminster Theological Centre (WTC) in Cheltenham when I heard about the fire and our friend’s death. Paco and Gloria actually comforted me, telling me how their son had become active de corazon (from the heart) in a church in the months before his death, reading the Bible and seeking God’s presence. While clearly grieving, they told me they were at peace, glad for these last 13 years with their son.

The students interceded for Honduras, for our ministry there– and the course was a powerful time of reflection, worship and prayer. The following week I taught my missions course to two different WTC groups. I was deeply moved when an offering was taken that brought in $20,000– enough to purchase a truck for Tierra Nueva in Honduras.

Right now two of our colleagues from Tierra Nueva in Burlington, Nick and Salvio are visiting Angel David and the ministry there in Minas de Oro. I include Nick’s prayer update below, and greatly value your intercession for prayer points below.

“So much to share, but so little time before the internet cafe closes here in Minas de Oro. Here are a couple highlights with some prayer requests at the bottom:

Yesterday, Salvio, Angel David, and I were able to visit Tierra Nueva’s coffee finca in Alta Mira. It’s a bumpy 3.5 hour drive from Minas de Oro, and we took a truck that I’m pretty sure didn’t have any shocks. Right when we got to the top of the 1510 meter rise (altitude is great for growing coffee but not for climbing unpaved pot-holed roads), the truck began to hemorrhage water from the radiator and oil from the gear box below the chassis. It was an amazing lesson in campo mechanics though: they put some powder from a coke bottle into the radiator, tightened up some things under the chassis, filled the radiator with another two gallons of water, and then we were on our way again. All in all, it was great to see the finca and check in with the muchacho who is running the finca for us, but by the end of the day Salvio and I both felt like we’d been on a 7-hour carnival ride–a seemingly endless agitation cycle only slightly easier on the body than the saddle sore we would have no doubt had making the trip ten years ago.

Today we went to Mal Paso, the town where Angel David is from. It’s a town that a lot of us have been praying for through this past year. Unfortunately, it’s almost a ghost town, with almost 70% having fled for their lives after a series of homicides that has left a pall of terror on the town’s inhabitants.

Salvio and I led a Bible study on John 10, about the enemy’s desire to steal, kill, and destroy–something that he’s achieved all too successfully in Mal Paso–by sowing division, enmity, vengeance, and unforgiveness. We briefly touched on John 17–Jesus’ prayer for protection, that the disciples would be one as he and the father are one–and we prayed for everyone for healing from the trauma from this last year. It was beautiful, but it was also really sorrowful. On Sunday we hosted a gathering of a lot of the local leaders who have been participating in the house churches in Minas de Oro and the surrounding communities. Salvio and I each led a Bible study, and we also got to play some Pictionary.

Lolito came and spent the night with us (Lolito is a great friend who lived with us at Tierra Nueva for two or three years before returning to Honduras). It was a sobering evening though as he described the escalating violence around his community. About a month ago, there was a gruesome homicide in a small village called Paradise just below where Lolito lives. Unfortunately the details are too graphic for me to relate, but suffice to say that an older woman was chopped to death by three young men just outside her house. The young men killed her because she had reported them when they slaughtered a cow illegally on her land. Two weeks later, each of the boys was shot and killed at midnight in his bed. Relatives of the woman who was killed have even been promising retribution on the families of the young men.

Which brings me to the sad news: although I reported earlier that things here in Honduras are a lot calmer than we initially feared in coming down here, we’ve been realizing that there is an undercurrent of violence and fear that pervades this community. Last week, we visited a woman who has lost two sons to hired hit men (sicarios in the local language); you could still see the shotgun holes in the door of her adobe home. If you ask people in Minas de Oro, most report that things are more calmado (calmer). But that calm has come at a price.

We’ve learned that Minas de Oro has a covert network of citizens who collect money from local resident collaborators to put into a special account in the local bank. When some of the local youth get out of hand, they pay someone to kill that person, which has resulted in the death of 60 youths in the past 5 years. So yes, things are calmer here in Minas de Oro, but it’s an artificially wrought and superficial peace enforced by the threat of violence.
Please pray for the following:

• A restoration of appropriate social order. There is very little justice here in Honduras, which is why civilians have had to resort to hiring hit men to carry out reprisals for petty thefts and delinquency. As many of you are already aware, the prisons and justice system are a wreck here, not only because of over crowding, the horrific fire three weeks ago, but also from the intrusion of gangs (today, from what I understood on the news, 17 were killed in one of the San Pedro Sula prisons). While I believe whole-heartedly in God’s kingdom that goes beyond justice (loving enemies, generosity, and Calvary-like sacrifice), I am also appreciating how important justice is in a context like Honduras. I don’t even know what to ask you to pray for without seeming trite, but hopefully you know what I’m getting at.

• Salvio and I leave Sunday morning for Tegucigalpa to visit the clinic before leaving Monday morning. Please pray for safe travels and getting around Tegucigalpa without trouble.

• Please pray for discernment and a smooth and honoring transition for the old guard of Tierra Nueva in Honduras as we try to invite more young leaders to participate in the new work of Tierra Nueva in Honduras.

Please pray for us as we work with Angel David to upgrade our accountability system for the administration of the coffee finca, the water project, and the pastoral fund so it can handle future growth.”

Nick

Please pray for the following additional requests, and consider if there are other ways the Spirit may be leading you to bring relief to Honduras.

• Pray for Angel David as he leads Tierra Nueva in Honduras—for lots of wisdom, grace and for the power of the Holy Spirit as he leads Bible studies and prays for people in their homes, reaches out to at-risk young people on the margins and identifies and raises up leaders.

• For collaboration and unity between the churches in Minas de Oro. For a true movement of renewal to sweep through Honduras that includes turning away from violence, forgiving enemies and pursuing all the is required for peace.
• For comfort for Paco and Gloria and their family, and for the many others who have lost family members to the violence.

Finally, plans are in the works to upgrade the coffee farm through replanting, pouring cement drying patios, and building solar coffee bean dryers ($3,000). Tierra Nueva Honduras also is hoping to remodel their water purification plant building to include a home for Angel David and his wife Esperanza, guest rooms and a meeting room ($8,000). If you would like to designate support to these projects, please send your contribution earmarked for TN Honduras to:

Tierra Nueva
PO Box 161
Burlington, WA
98233 USA

Saturday in London I was on the tube (London Underground) on my way to visit a Servants of Asia’s Urban Poor missional community in Southall, an Indian immigrant community in West London.  In the crowded metro I saw an African couple with young boy and girl in a baby carriage.  The thought “give them £20.00 ($30.00)” suddenly dropped into my consciousness.

“Okay, if that’s you God tell me again in some way,” I thought, resisting the idea of giving that much money to a complete stranger.  I got off the metro in one of downtown London’s busiest stations (Paddington) and made my way to the over-ground train to Southall, barely making the next train for another 25 minute ride. Towards the end of my journey I went to find a bathroom.  I followed the signs, walking through the train from car to car—and then decided to stop as I realized we as were nearing my destination.

There in front of me was the African family I’d first seen in the underground!  Rather than immediately giving them money, I briefly initiated conversation, focusing on the kids.  Just then the train stopped and I figured they were likely going further.  “If they get off here, then I’ll know for sure,” I thought.  I got off the train and they did too.   At that point I approached the man, handing him a £20 bill and said: “I think God is telling me to give this to you.”

The man immediately began telling me how he and his family were immigrants from Nigeria and had been homeless for the past week.  “Last night we found a cheap B&B for £15, but we don’t know where we are staying tonight” he said.  He told me how they had come to England seeking medical treatment for their three-year-old son, who suffered from what they’d thought was congestive heart disease.  After some initial exams the British Social Services told them there was nothing they could do for them.  “Can I pray for your son?” I asked.  The father told me they had learned that exams that he has an enlarged heart that caused many health problems.  They said they were Christians and would gladly receive prayer.  Right there on the train platform I crouched before the boy and prayed for healing for his heart and a place to live for the family.

“Do you know anyone here in Southall that might know about housing?” the father asked.  In fact I was on my way to visit Servants, a community committed to serving the urban poor (http://www.servantsasia.org/index.php/en/united-kingdom.html).  I took his cell phone and email.  There was joy in our faces as we parted company—and I was glad for the Spirit’s persistence with me in spite of my resistance.  Later I called him with phone numbers of groups that offered services to homeless families.

It was inspiring to hear about the ministry of Servants that afternoon— whose community members and interns are each imbedded in different churches and existing ministries to the poor, helping with community gardens, children’s ministries and other social services and promoting Christian unity in the heart of some of England’s largest Sikh and Somalia communities.

Later that evening in a church near London Bridge I spoke to several hundred people gathered from five churches that form part of C4T, Christians for Transformation (http://c4t.org.uk).  The title they had given me for my talk was “Your kingdom come in Bermondse & Rotherhithe as it is in heaven.”  African immigrants joined English believers from different denominations—all longing to see Jesus’ Kingdom make a difference in traditionally working-class London neighborhoods marked by racism, alcoholism and spiritual indifference.

I had just completed two weeks of teaching my missions and Old Testament courses at Westminster Theological Centre in the UK.  My objective is to prepare people to ministry outside the church, with a focus on the poor, immigrant groups, inmates and others on the margins. In the UK and Europe these days mainstream Christians are challenged by the rise of poverty, visible in homelessness, illegal immigration, human trafficking and other social problems.  People are expecting increasing social unrest as European nations cut back on social benefits.  My mission course includes sessions on Kingdom identity vs. national identity, with an emphasis on Jesus’ call for his followers to be differentiated from the dominant powers.

I am accustomed to some resistance when talking about Jesus’ way of combating evil (announcing the Kingdom of God, teaching, healing, deliverance, prophetic confrontation…the cross, forgiveness) in contrast to normal human approaches (law-enforcement, violence, war). Increasingly though I find people agreeing that our identity as sons and daughters of the Father in heaven must trump our visible identity markers (race, nationality, profession…), and even praying to be transferred from being under “the authority of darkness” (Col 1:13) into “stranger and alien” status.  Our upgraded status in Christ includes being filled with and led by the Holy Spirit so as to carry the present reality of Jesus’ Kingdom more deliberately into our work places, cities and wherever we go.

The last two sessions of each of my three mission courses were on healing and prophetic evangelism.  When demonstrating how to pray for healing in public we witnessed firsthand students being healed, including a woman from Zimbabwe who received healing from chronic ankle and knee pain from a car accident 11 years before www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp5kXHrMGj8&feature=youtu.be

As part of the course students actually went out into the cities of Cheltenham and later Litchfield in groups of three to pray for people the Spirit guided us to.   People were often amazed that they would actually find specific individuals in places that the Holy Spirit revealed to them during the listening prayer time beforehand.  Most had never stepped out of their comfort zone to publicly engage strangers in conversation—let alone with offers to bless them or pray for their healing.  People were surprised and delighted by how many people welcomed their prayers (though there were some who refused).  Highlights for me during these two weeks were the three debriefs after these mini missions—when students told stories of stepping over the lines from private to public faith in ways that brought visible blessing.

This past Sunday in the Gar du Nord just after getting train from London I said a prayer, giving the Spirit permission to use me then and there.  While buying a metro ticket a young couple approached me, asking for money for a hotel.  He was from Romania and she from France.  Rather than giving them money I invited them to go with me to meet people in our church, and then offered to pray for them.  Surprisingly they accepted, asking me to pray for her anxiety and pregnancy as she is three-months pregnant.  I took their phone number and invited them to church that evening.

In the next three months we will be offering a course at Eglise Reformée du Marais on “diaconia prophétique” followed by three evening street outreaches in April, May and June in downtown Paris.   Gracie and I travel to Belgium this weekend to speak to church leaders on how Christians can prepare for growing social unrest as Belgium is expected to soon cut back on social services.

A deeper, more holistic advocacy is needed today that combines respectful presence, concrete assistance and organizing for social change with prophetic proclamation of Jesus’ kingdom enhanced by the gifts of the Spirit.   As we prepare for and actually practice stepping outside our comfort zone in keeping with Jesus’ teaching and example in the Gospels, guided by the Spirit, I am sure that we will be led into new adventures in effective social advocacy and evangelism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of the son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:13-14).

Gracie and I are experiencing the challenges and the joys of assisting people to experience Jesus’ deliverance from darkness into the Kingdom.  We are part of a church in the center of Paris where prayer ministers have been trained and organized to pray for those who ask for help.  People call or come in for prayer from many different nations with countless conditions often tied to their unique cultures. This has been a rich experience and we are learning a lot through each prayer appointment.

People often come to Eglise Réformée du Marais after they have exhausted other know alternatives: medical treatment, psychoanalysis, different religions, witchcraft, occultism and different Christian denominations.  Some are desperate for solutions.

As people recount their problems it is sometimes easy to feel intimidated, like we’re in way over our heads.  One of the main lessons we are learning is that while experience and knowledge are important and helpful, we need clear direction from the Holy Spirit to assist each individual to move from darkness into Jesus’ Kingdom.

A woman came for prayer last month who said she felt far from God, though she had begun to attend church again after a period of spiritual lethargy.  She was anxious about being able to get pregnant as she’d just suffered from a miscarriage, and was concerned as her partner is not a Christian.

As we prayed all I could think of was a verse I had read earlier that day: “The secret things belong to the Lord” (Deut 29:29).  After a brief prayer asking the Holy Spirit to show her if this verse was relevant to her situation, she told my French ministry team partner and I that something came to mind.

She then recounted how seven years before she’d been involved in a relationship with a married man, and had gotten pregnant, and then had an abortion.  She had really wanted to have the baby, and this had brought her great anguish.  She hadn’t told anyone, and had been living with this secret all these years, with lots of resulting shame and guilt.  She was able to receive this text as a word that her secretly aborted baby “belonged to the Lord,” and she cried and cried as she confessed and repented.

We shared with her about Jesus’ forgiveness, and his offer to take away her guilt and shame.   She found it much easier to accept that Jesus had forgiven her then to actually forgive herself.   As we asked her questions it became clear to her that she had been sinned against by the married man, who was in a position of power since she was younger, an immigrant and was being strongly pressured to end the pregnancy.

The presence of God was strong as we listened to her, and she felt led to forgive the man, then herself, and to receive the Spirit into the places left vacant as she laid her guilt and shame down at Jesus’ feet.  We prayed for her non-Christian partner and their relationship and she expressed her longing to have a child. As she said goodbye she seemed to radiate light and joy, and we were amazed to have witnessed God at work so powerfully in a first one-hour appointment.

***

Pastor Gilles Boucomont and his team here in Paris have a lot to share based on years of one-on-one ministry appointments and theological reflection.  We have organized a course in English for pastors and leaders in churches or ministries who feel a need to learn more about holistic liberation.  There is limited space available.   Read the description below and respond if you’d like to attend.

Towards A New Theology and Practice of Liberation: A course for ministry workers in Paris, March 22-25, 2012

Pastors and ministry workers encounter obstacles to personal and social transformation that push us deeper into Scripture, God’s Presence and the larger body of Christ in search of approaches that bring breakthrough.  The objective of this conference is to train ministry practitioners in hands on approaches to personal deliverance and spiritual warfare.  How do we advance the Kingdom of God amidst the micro and macro powers of this world that oppose Jesus’ reign?  Topics to be covered include:

A Biblical theology of personal and territorial liberation

• Liberation as life vs. death rather than good vs. evil (morality)
• Growing in the discernment of spirits and prophetic ministry.
• Knowing and appropriating our authority in Christ
• Distinguishing and confronting maladies of body, soul and spirit
• The place of repentance and forgiveness in deliverance.
• The place of counseling, spiritual direction and discipleship for promoting and maintaining freedom.

When: March 22-25, 2012

Where: Foyer le Pont 86, rue de Gergovie – 75014 Paris, (and Eglise Reformée du Marais)

Cost: Participants are responsible for accommodation & meals. Freewill offering

Who can come?  Ministry workers able to follow a training in English.  Space limited to 40 participants.  Write for more info or to sign up.

Limited rooms available.  Reserve your room here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dERCRF9LQ3lDOXZKVVByR21WV0wzdVE6MQ

March 21, 2011 Optional pre-seminar workshop on confronting spiritual obstacles to renewal in denominational structures & how this has happened at Eglise Reformée du Marais.

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Gilles Boucomont, Pastor of Eglise Reformée du Marais.  Gilles is seeing rapid growth in a historic Protestant church in the heart of Paris, in a ministry that integrates worship, biblical teaching, hospitality, and deliverance.  He has written two books in French on deliverance, Au Nom de Jésus: Liberer le Corps, l’Ame, l’Esprit, Lyon: Editions Première Partie, 2010 and Au Nom de Jésus: Mener le Bon Combat, Lyon: Editions Première Partie, 2011.

Bob Ekblad, Pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and lecturer in Biblical studies and Mission at Westminster Thelogical Centre in the UK, is on special assignment with Tierra Nueva in France.  He is author of Reading the Bible with the Damned, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005 and A New Christian Manifesto: Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God, 2008.

Many people struggle to step beyond what can feel like a formidable barrier to talk about Jesus or offer to pray for blessing or healing for strangers in public settings.  Since my last update regarding my own struggles to stop, listen to and offer spiritual support to homeless people and others, much has changed.

This past month I’ve stepped over my invisible line, stopping and offering to pray for a number of people on the street.  I’ve been surprised and sometimes delighted by people’s responses.  Like when I offered to pray for a old hunched-over lady from Romania who begs in front of the Louvre, who kissed my hand and blessed me, and told me how her son is a Pentecostal pastor.

That same day I stopped beside a man from Bulgaria who bowed before those walking by near the Belleville metro, his forehead on the pavement, hands clutching a cup in front of his head in a gesture of extreme humility.  When I gave him a two Euro coin he got up and warmly thanked me in broken Spanish.  I learned that his name is Petrof and that he’s been in Paris about 3 months.  “I don’t like to do this.  I am used to working but cannot find a job,” he laments.  “I’ve just come from Spain where I worked as a truck driver,” he says, pulling out his Spanish truck driver license.  I offered to pray for him and he gladly accepted, telling me he is an Orthodox Christian.  I prayed for his back pain and he said it went away.  He too kissed my hand and thanked me profusely, giving me his cell phone number in case I hear of work or an address he can use to receive mail.

When we first moved to Paris I had a mental picture of individual French Christians inside big soap bubbles—only a thin, easily-broken barrier between a private and public faith.  In fact the ideology of laicité came into being after the French Revolution, when a clear differentiation between the church and the secular state became part of the official French national posture.  Many Protestants were glad to have some official limit to Roman Catholic influence, which dominated the nation for centuries.  Laicité now functions to prohibit Muslim girls and women from wearing burqas to school or work, holding Muslims back from public expression.  While this ideology has not silenced everyone, it is officially illegal for government workers or ministry or other non-profit workers who receive any public funds to talk about their faith unless they are specifically asked.

Many of the nations’ most effective ministries to the poor, immigrants, the homeless and others on the margins were started by Christians.  Most of them now separate social service from any public witness regarding faith or anything spiritual.  Most Christians I’ve talked with feel pressure to keep their faith private, and yet long to step out into greater freedom, which feels like almost a transgression.

In mid November I was asked to speak in a Reformed church near Valence (St-Laurent-du Pape) on getting beyond blocks/paralysis in evangelism.  At the end of my talk an area pastor came to the front, deeply moved & began to really exhort people, at one point yelling out: “Ça suffit!  Ça suffit! “That’s enough! That’s enough! We mustn’t be silent any more.”  Many people came up for prayer, including a man who sobbed as he asked Jesus for greater confidence and boldness.

This past Friday night I finished my last night teaching an 11-week mission course at the Service Protestant de Mission Défap.  The previous Friday, just after sessions on missional community and prophetic evangelism we had broken into five groups of four course participants and went out on the streets at 10:30pm to pray for homeless people and others.  After a final dialogical Bible study on the Angel of the Lord’s seeking and finding Hagar in Genesis 16, sending her back to religious insiders Abraham and Sarah, we debriefed the previous week’s outreach.

Participants reported rich encounters and prayer times with homeless people, and experienced first hand the joy of seeking and finding God’s precious people like the angel must have– and being evangelized in the process by these contemporary Hagars (whom the angel prophesied over and sent back to the “elect”, perhaps resulting in their change of heart).  It seems that the bubbles are bursting and people are feeling called to reach out to people on the streets and beyond.  Our next street outreach is set for Friday night, January 13, beginning with a time of corporate worship and prayer at the Eglise Reformée du Marais.

Please pray for the many homeless people this Christmas season.  The weather’s getting colder and wetter.  Pray also for those here in France who are feeling called to reach outside their comfort zone to share God’s love, for inspiration, determination and sensitivity to the Spirit.

Tonight is the official launch of Luke and my blog Homeless in Paris.  Take and look and keep visiting at http://thehomelessinparis.blogspot.com

It’s been nearly three months now since I’ve been in direct contact with people incarcerated in a jail or prison– the longest period in over 17 years.  While life and ministry here in Paris is rich, I miss my routine of Thursday and Sunday Bible studies in Skagit County Jail and occasional forays into foreign prisons.  I especially miss the many jailed men I’ve come to know and love, the times of discovery of very Good News of Jesus’ love for them and me, their love and friendship, and times of prayer where the Spirit seems to always move to comfort, heal, awaken hope.

So one of the first appointments I made here in Paris was with the national director of jail/prison chaplaincy for France of the Service justice et aumônerie des prisons, Aumônier national.”  He warmly welcomed me into his office and suggested that I accompany each of the chaplains of jails and prisons around Paris as they lead Bible studies and visit.  I loved this idea, and immediately sent him a copy of my passport.  I’ve since been waiting for the call, feeling the distance grow and missing connecting with inmates.  In the meantime I’ve found myself greatly challenged by another reality that is much more complicated and too easy to ignore.

Homeless men, women and entire families are everywhere in Paris—especially in the center of the city and it’s surrounding districts.  We live in the 12^ieme arrondissement, and regularly walk past people begging for change in sometimes very dramatic ways.  Like a man who begs on his knees, his forehead resting on the pavement, hands outstretched holding a mangled hat, or the two Polish men who came by the church Wednesday night asking if we had sleeping bags as it’s really cold.  Entire families from Romania have been sleeping on mattresses in the Place de la Bastille and elsewhere.

Bao, a French woman originally from Cambodia works for a social service agency that the French government has contracted to care for the homeless through building relationships and connecting them to social services.  We attend the same church and she has been attending my missions course.  In France it is not legal to mix ministry and social service due to strict laws separating church and state.  We have been learning about how complicated the situation of homelessness is, and hear about increasing acts of violence against the homeless & growing intolerance of panhandling, the smell of urine and the disturbing visibility of desperate people sleeping on the streets in colder and wetter weather.

A few weeks ago a building that several hundred homeless people were squatting in was set on fire, leaving all these people with nowhere to stay.  In another case someone set fire to the blanket covering a man as he slept. There are enough perils without direct violence, like the woman who gave birth to her baby right on the street, which subsequently died.

I’ve been disturbed by my own movement past homeless people, and my justifications that closely resemble the religious leaders who walked past the man beaten by thieves in the Good Samaritan story.  A few days ago I rode my bike past a man lying on his back across the sidewalk as I was late for an important meeting.  Earlier in the year on a short visit to Paris I’d walked past a desperate-looking older man who lay begging, and got a flash picture of myself with my hand on his heart, praying for him.  I continued walking for a block, telling myself this was my only opportunity to buy special French soap for Gracie.

The voice of Jesus was persistent and won in this case.  I walked back and asked this man who reeked of urine if he was in pain.  “Yes,” he said in broken French, “and I haven’t been able to sleep for a long time.”  “Do you have pain in your heart?” I asked.  “Yes,” he responded.  “Can I pray for God to help you, and is it okay if I put my hand over your heart?”  I asked, and he agreed.  I blessed him with God’s comfort and healing in Jesus’ name, and he looked visibly moved.  “Je suis athée,” (“I am an atheist”) is all he said.  “That’s okay, God sees you and loves you,” I responded, and continued on in search of soap.

Last week I came home late from a meeting.  On the last block before our apartment I found myself catching up with a young middle eastern looking man and immediately felt compelled to talk with him, maybe even about Jesus.  I did begin to talk with him, & learned that he was actually from Bangladesh.  When we were about to pass our apartment I decided to not pursue the conversation.  As we parted company he said: “May God bless you!” completely surprising & convicting me.

A week or so later around 11pm on a Friday night just after my missions course Gracie and I went out to a café with Bao and a few other leaders who attend the course.  We talked about inviting participants to go out and pray for people on the street after the next course.  Then as we walked into the subway station we passed an older homeless man, and I once again ignored a voice inviting me to stop.  Christian and Grace, two of those who’d gone out with us did stop, and so the rest of us returned.  Together we prayed for this poor homeless guy, who cried and cried as we laid hands on him, blessed him and gave him some change.

Last Monday we gathered with an Eglise Reformée de France and a Pentecostal pastor, Bao and others to pray for the homeless, and to ask for God’s guidance about what we should do.  God is clearly calling others to respond too.

God has been challenging me to step out of my comfort zone, making time to talk with the homeless and strangers.  Hebrews 13:2-3 is ringing in my ears these days: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.  Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body.”

Yesterday I received the long-awaited call from the head of jail chaplaincy for Paris.  Tonight we are meeting before my missions class—the very class that is preparing to begin some kind of street outreach.  Please pray for us, for growing compassion and discernment as we seek to respond to Jesus’ direction for us here and now.

PS.  Check out my son Luke’s photo blog and flickr

http://streetphotographyinthecity.blogspot.com and http://www.flickr.com/photos/luke-ekblad-photography.

 

Continuing to expect Jesus’ healing here and now is often harder than writing it off as unrealistic or something to be awaited on the other side of death. Everywhere I travel lately I meet people and communities crippled by disappointment.

A man in Iceland prayed for days that his sister would come back to life after a drug overdose. A pastor of a church in the UK died of cancer in spite of massive prayer efforts. A close friend’s Pakistani Christian friend who advocated for minorities was gunned down in Islamabad in March. I myself have been discouraged by the slew of revenge killings in a Honduran community dear to my heart—and now by a close friend’s decline in a long prayer-bathed battle against cancer. What disappoints do you have, small or big?

“How many of you have been disappointed by God?” I asked a group of inmates back in July. Many were honest enough to admit frustrations at God not apparently answering prayers: their girl friends’ refusal to turn away from drug habits or the courts denials of their requests to be admitted into drug court rather than going straight to serve long prison sentences. Others were afraid to admit their disappointments—especially at a time when they really need God’s help. Many assume that being honest with God might get you on God’s bad side.

I have been learning to bring my complaints to Jesus, and encouraging many to risk transparency with God through the clear articulation of disappointments. Martha and Mary have been helpful teachers, and I’ve discovered the fresh relevance of John 11—a chapter dedicated mostly to people’s complaints to Jesus—who doesn’t punish them (or us) for being real but goes with them and us to the depths of grief—through the darkness and towards the other side.

The story begins in John 11:1-3, where Mary and Martha are mentioned, and Mary is forefronted as the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair—a bold act of transparent worship in the house of a judging Pharisee (see Lk 7:36-50). Mary is a true devotee who represents those in relationship with Jesus who come to him expecting answers to prayers.

Mary and Martha send word to Jesus about their brother Lazarus: “Lord, he who you love is ill” (v. 3). Jesus deliberately stays where he is for two days, and Lazarus dies. By the time Jesus approaches Bethany Lazarus has already been dead four days.

Martha goes out to meet Jesus, while Mary stays back, grieving in the house. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give whatever you ask him” (v. 21).

Martha’s complaint is strong and so is her faith. Yet in the ensuing conversation it is clear that she has no expectation that Jesus can or will resurrect her brother before the last day (v. 24). Jesus responds, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me shall never die,” and invites her to believe– in him. Her affirmation of faith in the aftermath of premature death, that he is Christ, Son of God, the Coming One energizes her as she stands before him. She goes back and takes pastoral liberties, tricking her despondent sister into approaching Jesus with two well-intentioned lies.

“The teacher is here and is calling you” (v. 28). Intercessors affirm as real that which is not yet actual based on what they believe to be true. Jesus was not yet in the village, as the next verse clearly states. Nor had Jesus called for Mary. Martha’s faith jumpstarts Mary’s. She gets up quickly and goes to him.

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at this feet and repeats Martha’s exact complaint but without Martha’s confession of faith: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus is deeply impacted. He doesn’t correct her, explain himself or in any way justify his absence. A series of verbs shows Jesus’ increasing closeness to Mary, Martha, and their dead brother. He sees her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”

Jesus shows God’s willingness to go with us fully into our pain. Rather than distancing himself through theological reflection Jesus asks: “Where have you laid him?” (v. 34). The people invite him deeper into the concrete details of their upset: “Come and see,”– and Jesus weeps.

Jesus’ empathy leads some in the crowd to complain as I sometimes do: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (v. 37). The crowd doesn’t complain directly to Jesus as Martha and Mary do, but talk about him in the third person.

Regardless of different people’s ways of addressing Jesus, the text says nothing to critique people or to justify Jesus. Rather Jesus shows a willingness to go even deeper into people’s root disappointments and loss, inviting them (and us) to intercession to the point of discomfort and even offense. How far will Jesus go? Much further than we will it seems.

Jesus is described as being “deeply disturbed” but not intimidated as he comes to the tomb, a cave with a stone lying against it. Jesus commands: “Take away the stone.”

Martha represents the realist. She’s the voice of those who accept the finality of death and impossibility of repair. “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Martha resists Jesus descent into the grave.

Jesus addresses her unbelief with a challenge: “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

They take away the stone and Jesus is there, face-to-face with the rotting corpse of his friend. He cries with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “unbind him, and let him go.”

Many of the Jews witnessing the event believed in Jesus, and I have been feeling compelled to put my faith more fully in the person of Jesus than ever before. Though opponents sought to kill Lazarus and did manage to kill Jesus, and John the Baptist while Jesus was still alive—his resurrection means he himself continues to be the resurrection and the life for us—before and after death.

I’ve spent untold hours these past months grieving the death of the men of Mal Paso and of my own and Tierra Nueva’s seeming powerlessness to stop the violence. I have felt freer to speak my laments and complaints directly to Jesus—and it seems my faith, my intercession and my longing for transformation are increasing. There is so much about prayer and God’s action in the world that I still do not understand. So much remains a mystery. I am glad right now that the violence in Mal Paso has actually stopped. A calm appears to be returning to the village and TN’s Honduran leader David is feeling encouraged.

Please continue to pray with us for the Kingdom of God to come more and more to this village and to Minas de Oro—and for wisdom and strength for our leader David. Please continue to pray for Tina’s healing.

May Jesus increase your faith to bring your uncensored disappointments, complaints and grief directly to him in prayer. May you experience first-hand God’s presence, goodness and power as you come into Jesus’ Presence and as he goes with you into your difficulties to bring resurrection and life.

There’s a village in Honduras called Mal Paso “Bad Step” that is dear to my heart. Four men were murdered in a string of vengeance killings from February to June. In response, Tierra Nueva’s (TN) Honduran leader David organized a prayer walk that brought together TN house-church participants with Pentecostals, Catholics and other villagers—a very beautiful and unusual sign of unity. I sent out a prayer update about this last month.

Then in early July three more men were brutally murdered within a week. One of these men was Teodoro, a friend who first hosted TN’s agricultural meetings and eventual Bible studies in the corridor of his house in Mal Paso in 1984. Teodoro, David’s cousin and next-door neighbor, was shot to death right there in the corridor where TN first began.

David has been right at the scene of all these killings, attending to the massacred bodies of men he’s grown up with. He has accompanied the families to bury and mourn their dead and has been deeply shaken. All of these men were people he and our ministry has sought to draw into friendship with Jesus, friend of sinners. But it looks like’s the ruler of this world is winning on this beloved front—and this deeply troubles David and me.

There are no police investigations or effective law-enforcement in the region. The closest police post has young officers without transportation. They themselves fear for their lives in this wild-west-like region that is increasingly home to bands of heavily-armed young gangsters often composed of deportees fresh from prison sentences in the US.

The very people who are doing the killings are men who we at Tierra Nueva refuse to give up on! And yet we feel quite impotent with our naked gospel and prayers. We long for miracles, for Jesus’ way to be more attractive than the dominant approach, the “realistic” killing of enemies that alleges to bring security.

These recent deaths have been especially hard for David. David sees his neighbors arming themselves and living in the terror of the ambush, which involves incessant rehearsing shooting to kill first or be killed.

“I refuse to do this Roberto,” says David—who continues to be won over by Jesus’ call to love and bless enemies.

In all of my years of ministry I have never met such a grace-filled man of peace as David. He has poured himself out for his community, and together we have sought after these very men on the margins who now are dying. Last week another young man was shot to death on the road out of town to the fields that I’ve visited hundreds of times, and rumors are flying that others we know are on the list.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21) is a beloved Scripture that we read and seek to practice. But how do we overcome evil with good?

David has given his life in love for this village and we’ve backed him up for over 27 years. We’ve helped the village install gravity-flow potable water and irrigation systems, establish agricultural committees, purchase land for landless farmers, implement re-forestation projects, begin an adult education program “Educatodos” (Educate Everyone) that is helping many who have only completed third grade continue their education.

TN has conducted group Bible studies in Mal Paso for years, drawing growing numbers of people. We have continued a more personal house-to-house visitation and prayer ministry for individuals and families. We’ve organized village fiestas and healing services where we’ve seen many people healed in Jesus’ name and filled with the Holy Spirit. I’ve brought teachers and spiritual leaders to Mal Paso from all over the world. David has organized a weekly worshiping community, and we established a number of house churches in this town.

We seek to overcome evil with good in every way we know how—but it seems we are not succeeding. I have even made contact with a Honduran General who is a Christian, asking him to help get a police post in this village at the request of the villagers. After an initial phone conversation and a number of emails, I’m not hearing anything back.

A number of families most affected by the violence have now moved away, including David, who has moved to the nearby municipal capital where TN is officially based. Others who are hearing of alleged threats via rumor are trying to move. The woman in charge of TN’s Educatodos has just told us her family is likely to move soon, taking another one of TN’s key leaders out of the area.

I’m in conversation with our Honduran leader, David on an every-other-day basis by phone. We’ve been grieving together, praying for each other and trying to move forward. We see that we are at risk of losing hope, of adjusting our expectations of Jesus’ reign to the reality of Mal Paso’s violence.

Jesus’ warnings to his disciples in Jerusalem just before his arrest and crucifixion are both sobering and encouraging. They describe what we are now seeing.

At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Matt 24:9-14)

Please pray for David, for Gracie and me, and for TN’s Honduran faith community members:

• that Jesus would keep our hearts soft and that we would endure to the end in our announcing of the gospel of the kingdom.
• for wisdom for David and for me as I advise him.
• for protection for David and his family, and also for Jorge, Arturo, Beto and others who remain in the village.
• for those who are plotting more violence—that they would have encounters with Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
• for an end to the violence in Mal Paso and a growing movement of forgiveness and reconciliation.
• for Mal Paso’s leaders and members of “hogares en tranformacion” (households in transformation)– that they would experience Christ’s peace and protection and be bright shining lights and agents of peace.

Please pray for Jesus kingdom of peace to grow stronger and the message of Christ’s victory over death to flourish and make a visible difference in this time of crisis.