An ache that turned into goodness

Last week I had an ache.

It wasn't physical, it was in my heart. It was one of those things that is less than "pain" but more than "mild discomfort." I was doing okay on the outside but it followed me around on the inside. It had me a little down... sad.

Pain focuses things. It takes out the margins of life -- narrows the page. Let it run amok and it becomes hard to think about much else -- like when I stub my toe on the coffee table and while I'm rolling around on the carpet I can think of nothing else except, youch, THAT HURT.

Something else that is good: A dog tracking the sun spot across the carpet. 

Normally, I can fit the pieces that make up life's ups and downs into a bigger puzzle. When the sun is out and the sky is blue, I can dream. I pan across the timeline of my life, seeing past hurts in context and the future full of hope. But pain zooms me in. Instead of months, weeks, days... all I see the immediate. It's how I feel right now.

But this time, I wasn't going to let the pain win.

In the darkness, I knew I was being handed a ticket to take a ride. And this train was going to take me deeper into God's heart.

His good,

good,

heart.

We are so myopic as humans – we live a tiny sliver of time and decide, based on a limited number of events, whether life is good or not. But I know that when I look back, in hindsight, I see that what I once thought was bad, wasn’t. In the fullness of time, I see goodness at work.

The bible says that everything good comes from God. God is the source of all love. To believe in God is to believe He is good. They go hand in hand.  

I don't know why awful things happen but I know there's evil at work in the world. God hates innocence lost. He points His wrath against those who cause His children harm. Deny God's wrath against evil and you also deny His ability to be good.

Deep down, lots of people in the church think God isn't good. Their prayers are pleas to an unkind God. 

"Don't you see what's happening here?"

"Can't you see that I've had enough?"

When we’re faced with something unexpectedly good we’re often left flummoxed. If a stranger were to pick up our restaurant tab, we catch ourselves thinking, “I would never do this therefore they must have hidden motivations. No one is this good.”

We’re tempted to process God’s actions the same way, to use our experience to judge God by our own motivations. We see everything through our humanity. We see life moment by moment. The hardest part in learning to trust in God’s goodness is learning to trust His ability to see beyond our circumstances.

This time, I chose to step back, to zoom out. I was hearing the opposite but I believed the truth that I couldn't yet see. 

The truth is simple: God is good and He's in control. 

And the rest of my life will be a journey into this ever unfolding, glorious fact.

- Andrew

My favourite book about my favourite topic: Encountering God

I just came back from a trip to Missouri as part of Bill Johnson's ministry team. Serving on Pastor Bill's team of seven students, praying for people for healing and impartation after he preached, having a lunchtime Q and A with him and receiving prayer from him was phenomenal. I will blog more about that, but in the meantime, I want to share why I came to think so much of this man and his ministry in the first place: he's all about the presence of God. 

In the first month of school, we did a book report on what happens to be my favourite non-fiction book of all time, Face to Face with God. While I'm sure you're thinking that reading my book report is pretty dull reading, I thought I'd share it in our blog because it's a pretty personal glimpse into my own journey in intimacy with Jesus and I thought some of you might be interested. 

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When I first read Face to Face with God, it blew my mind. I read it about five years ago and I couldn’t put it down. When I read about the encounters with God that Bill Johnson describes, I realized it was something I’d always longed for but never knew I wanted. What I thought Christianity was suddenly seemed dry and empty compared to coming to the banquet table of God’s presence. I remember begging the Lord for encounters like I was reading about. 

            

Now, re-reading the book five years later, it still stirs up the fires of longing inside me. I am even more hungry for Jesus than I was five years ago, only now it’s not a hunger based on desperation, but one based on having tasted and seen how good God is. I think when I first read the book, I was waiting for God to blow my mind with an experience like Pastor Bill’s in the middle of the night, as he describes in the first chapter, or an experience of being completely overcome like Heidi Baker, but I’ve come to realize that encounters with God look a little different for me. 

When I was first filled with the Holy Spirit during a Dunamis course at my home church in Guelph, I felt electric jolts that felt like contractions or labour pains. A couple of years after that, I took six months off work to devote my days to prayer and during that period, I had moments when waves of Jesus' love would hit me with more ecstasy than I’d ever before experienced.            

The theme of this year for me is intimacy and it's something I've made very intentional. I love to ask the Lord how He feels, or what’s on His mind. I want to know Him just for the sake of knowing Him, not with some end goal or task in mind. Recently, I was asking the Father what was on His mind and He was silent. Then my mind wandered to something that had recently hurt my feelings. Then I realized He wanted me to tell Him about it. When I did, I felt His love and compassion so overwhelmingly that I felt the tears of the emotional pain swallowed up in tears of gratitude at His kindness. Even though He already knows everything about me, He also wants to know me. He cares enough about the movements of my heart to want to hear about them directly from me. He wants me to make myself known to Him.

The other chapter that stood out for me was the one on the Presence “within” versus the “coming upon.” Sometimes it seems as though the focus at Bethel is the “coming upon,” which is astounding and beautiful, and I want to cultivate both. I want the Presence to be so cultivated within me that it’s not just about a moment of “coming upon,” but rather it’s about one flowing into another.  

I love the chapter on love, power, character and wisdom. I have cried out for the Spirit of God to fill me with more love for people. There is such a vital connection between being face to face with Jesus

and being a radical lover. The kind of love that Jesus walked in only comes from the overflow of His power within me. In that sense, power and love are beautiful when they’re paired together. Love without power doesn’t bring transformation; power without love lacks the intimate care that the Father has for His children. I want to operate in both equally.

Face to Face with God reminds us that true character and wisdom don’t come from striving or work; the ability to manifest joy, peace and righteousness come from the Holy Spirit’s presence and enabling grace upon my life. I regularly cry out for supernatural wisdom, creativity and revelation during my times of intimacy and encounter with the Lord.

The book concludes with a chapter about how we were made to shine. I want to be like Moses, with a shiny face, descending daily from my mountain-top glory experiences with God with a radiant countenance, so that others might yearn for and pursue their own connection with my beautiful Friend.

 ** I have an extra copy of this book that I would love to mail to the first person who emails me requesting it. My email is annelebolddouglas@gmail.com

Family joy

Family is good.

At the time of writing, we’re sitting on a plane, somewhere over the Atlantic, on our way home from my brother’s wedding. Jim married a stunning woman named Jasveen and we’ve just spent the last five days learning all about Sikh wedding customs and traditions.

The wedding was full of vibrant colours and meaningful rituals and loads of food. And dancing. Lots of dancing. Turns out Sikhs love to party. It was a spectacular time. 

Jas’ family was so gracious and welcoming and generous. We now have Sikh “cousins” all over the world, in England, Australia and Vancouver.

It struck me during the festivities that God loves family parties. He loves to pour joy into families. No wonder Jesus’ first miracle was changing water to wine at a wedding. I think He loved family celebrations so much that He wanted to add His blessing in the form of a really good vintage. Heaven’s reserve selection.

I loved spending the time with my mom and dad, sister and brother, aunt and uncle, and, of course, my gorgeous and kind new sister, Jas. Dressing up and eating and experiencing a different country and culture and rejoicing together was so good for the soul.

Weddings don't just bring the couple together, they bring families together, and re-establish who we are to one another. Sitting in a hotel room with my family, processing the day's events, I realized that these people are my peeps.

My parents said some encouraging things to me that felt like deep blessings for my spirit.

When we said good-bye, we were standing in Euston Station in London, surrounded by our baggage, my uncle making wry comments about being eaten by a silverback gorilla on an upcoming trip to Rwanda, my mom rescuing a young tourist who had lost her phone, my sister buying food for the tourist in crisis, my dad fetching coffee for my mother, my aunt organizing the baggage—typical family chaos.

And I chuckled. Because I love my family. A lot.

New Year's Day

Because my last post was about it feeling like Boxing Day when summer in Ontario and camp were over, I’m happy to say that coming back to Redding has felt like the start of a new year, with plenty of figurative ball-dropping, confetti and joy to go with it.

This post is going to be a bit newsy rather than thoughtful to give you a sense of what it’s been like since we returned.

It was wonderful to return to an actual home, with beds and sheets and towels and dishes, rather than staying in a hotel like last year. The first week back in Redding, Andrew and I did errands, re-stocked our fridge, worked on our first reading assignment for school — a book about the life and sermons of John G. Lake — and worked on our respective writing projects. 

Our new and  improved back patio

It’s hot here, but not humid, so we had fun setting up our back porch with discount furniture and a barbeque so we can fully enjoy Cali’s seemingly endless summer. We hosted a barbeque with our friends from Bethel and got caught up on how God blessed and worked through them over the summer.

(Since then a snake-eating black widow spider has invaded our lovely backyard conversation area, and if you haven’t seen the pic on Instagram or Facebook, you don’t want to. It’s nasty. Soon we’ll muster up the courage to kill the thing.)

The first week of school has been challenging already. This year focuses on leadership. It’s all about learning to sustain intimacy with God and passion for Jesus over the long term. It’s about learning to be hungry for more of God and filled with Him at the same time. It’s about recognizing and developing personal core values that translate into personal mission, then become vision that we can cast to others, so we can partner with the Holy Spirit to build projects and communities that transform the world.

In addition to our regular school hours, we get to choose a specialization, or track. The track I’ve chosen is “Leadership Coaching.” By the end of the year, I’ll be a certified life/leadership coach. I’m über excited about that.

We also get to go on ministry trips with the many Bethel leaders who travel all over the world doing conferences and church visits spreading some of the unique teaching and anointing that Bethel has. So far I’ve applied to do a local one-day trip with Bill Johnson, just two hours from Redding.

There are also electives we sign up for in Bible and ministry. I’m hoping to do a course on Galatians and a prophetic art class. So fun.

We’re also in the midst of signing up for city service projects.  There are over 70 options we can choose to serve people in this region! I’ve applied to healing rooms, women’s drug rehab, street ministry in San Francisco, and a few others, but we won’t know which option we get for another few weeks.

It seems that second year at BSSM is about realizing the uniqueness of who you are as a leader and learning to pull on the resources you need in order to lead with excellence. 

And as a side note, I joined a gym and I’m doing a ton of Zumba and weights classes. Really enjoying shaking my booty and getting jacked. 

Cam’s on the Redding Christian High School soccer team, Emma’s on the Bethel Christian School volleyball team and Cassie’s on the BCS worship team. Andrew’s taking motorcycle lessons (more on this in a future post).

The one area that feels uncertain and a bit lacking is community. After leaving tight communities back home with family, Guelph and camp, and coming back here where only a few of our people from last year are still around, it’s daunting to think about forming entirely new community once again. I find myself asking, “Who are the friends we’ll have lifetime relationships with? Are any of them here?” We’ve been so transient the last year, it’s hard to know.

We still don’t know what the future holds after this. But we do know that God has spectacular plans awaiting us and the experiences that this year holds are crucial keys to opening the door to those plans.

Happyyyy New Yearrrr!

It feels like Boxing Day

Written on August 23, the end of summer, on our way from Ontario to California

Photos by Tori Bennett

For our American friends, let me explain that Boxing Day is a Canadian holiday; it’s the day after Christmas. I assume it got its name because it’s the day you box up all the Christmas decorations. For me, Boxing Day has always been a little melancholy.

For weeks, as a child, I anticipated Christmas with daydreams about what would be under the tree — the gifts would be piled high, relatives would visit and we’d eat like kings. But then Christmas would come and go and it would be Boxing Day, signaling the end of the delicious anticipation. We’d have to pack up the decorations, eat stale shortbread and wait almost a whole year for next Christmas.

That’s how I feel right now.

The first few days after we left camp for the summer, I was still on an adrenaline high from the stress of packing for our 40-hour road trip to Cali and the memories of wonderful and transcendent things God did this summer. Also I was exhausted and really looking forward to the five of us being together as a family again.

But yesterday the realization set in: It’s over. For a whole year. The summer is done. 

I think of the months of anticipating the summer. I couldn’t wait to visit family in Bracebridge and Ottawa and friends in Guelph. And as for camp, I imagined dreamy worship, sweet sisterhood, giddy program moments and breathtaking beauty in people and creation.

There’s just something about that place. People get healed, inside and out. The Holy Spirit loves to come and play. I always imagine Jesus in torn jeans, an old T-shirt and Birkenstocks, traipsing about Girls’ Camp smiling at the beater-boarders, laughing during campfires and Late Shows, sitting beside the crafters, chuckling at the zaniness of wide games, holding hurting girls in his arms.

This summer, I saw bodies healed, souls restored and spirits awakened through the power and presence of God in community. I saw eyes light up as people heard the still, small voice of God for the first time. I saw girls from broken families find hope as they fell in love with Jesus. I saw young women who had experienced sad and terrible things discover joy in the presence of the Holy Spirit. I saw girls who had loved and served Jesus for years grow in identity and anointing and passion for Christ. 

I felt the Father rejoice over deepening intimacy with Him and each other.

Then there were the funny moments, the times I doubled over because of the wackiness of the jokes and the antics and the made-up songs. So much joy. 

I wish I wrote down more of those moments in my journal. I wish I had taken more pictures. Even now, the memories are fading.

There’s nothing like it. It is like Heaven on earth. And it’s grueling, exhausting and surreal at times.

Although the summer being over feels like Boxing Day, soon it will be New Year’s. Soon we’ll be in Redding for the start of a new year of school. There’s much more of God’s presence and power to look forward to, as well as fun family times and parties with friends from all over the world. God's mercies and blessings are new every morning. He has more than I can ask or imagine in store. He always fills my hands with more blessings than I can hold. 

But for now, I will mourn the passing of another wondrous summer.