Thinking about yesterday's post, still a little uncomfortable with my transparency, given that it might sound braggart. Then again, telling our story in a way that communicates the favor of God available to all was my objective.
As I often tell mentees: "if you can describe your journey with Christ without sounding arrogant, you are likely living below your means!" I dont just mean that from the standpoint of economics, but ideation, creativity and legacy! Hope you heard that yesterday!
My upcoming book is now progressing by way of gleanings from both Cabin Talks and my decades long morning blogs. Every day I awake loaded with fresh recall of stories long forgotten, a growing network of human resources, individuals much more professionally prepared than myself, all with crisp, new ideation! It's exciting!!
I am grateful that many of these acquaintances sprung from reading my earlier books, the writing initially a means of capturing my journey. Once published, others began to reach out for more depth of inquiry from a spiritual perspective. Apparently, my life experience and cross-sector engagements were found intriguing? Yet, behind every professional transition, a progressive spiritual trajectory which has steered my life over time. I am blessed!
From that journey, rich relationships have developed among entrepreneurs, spiritually alert and Kingdom focused. It now seems that multiple generations are boldly claiming partnership with God, doing business with God, rather than for God as my friend Shae Bynes now advocates globally!
In my younger days when hunting was a beloved hobby, one might occasionally need to smoke out an animal from its den, or by way of a briared limb twist against a burrowed animal's coat until possible to pull it from hiding.
Okay, I realize I may have just lost half of my well gentrified audience, but that's how I was raised, though I doubt seriously I could now harm an ornery tomcat!
Now, by way of a network of coaches and acquaintances, the Spirit seems to be smoking me out of my den literally, though in my senior years! My days are loaded with conversations in restaurants, coffee shops and of course my backyard cabin!
With each next-Gen individual or small group that I meet, there seems a clarion call to further unpack my thoughts. I guess that's what hope does, beyond keeping you young!
What had always seemed to me as a simple prayerful walk in pursuit of personal calling, now seems as if the Spirit was actually framing a Kingdom model, not for me to execute upon, but rather so as to recognize and encourage the next generation in this palpable moment of global transformation.
My true calling has always been about community, whether in the streets as a young kid, or later as a mayor. However, church was what I had always heard was the target, my great-grandfather a horseback riding moutain preacher, my mom raised by him, always reinforcing that thought. I should have known given my lifelong struggle to fully understand religion. God even chose to deliver my spiritual epiphany in my blue-collar dad's living room!
Had church been the "where I came to Christ," I might have brushed off this calling to cities! As to my mention of my blue-collar dad, I was raised with a strong work ethic, an " if you dont work you don't eat" kind've one.
Given a blue-collar upbringing and my "living room epiphany", marketplace ministry and community became a calling of God "without repentance" with no margin of comfort found when turning back.
The interesting side of the journey has been the grace with which it has unfolded, rather than the harsh pioneering struggle witnessed among my ancestors. They worked hard, worshipped harder and seldom settled given the need to plant churches and win souls! I owe them much, my journey perhaps made easier by them, though my calling would be hardly understood by them.
My life has seemed proof that if you follow your gut, do what you love, while staying open to change, provision will find you. That's how I have learned to live.
I'm not talking prosperity gospel here, or some late-stage capitalism motivated profitability, but rather means sufficient for your calling, along with a generosity, which the love of Christ always spawns.
When a community needed a landfill, a transfer station, a preschool, a dental clinic, senior housing or even a park God provided when pursued. Along with that, the means to keep myself and my family positioned according to their own destiny. I am watching that Psalm 139 womb-work being unfolded in my own daughter's life and now in her children.
There are however two economies, a Kingdom economy that is heavenly and a Cash that is man-made and temporal. At times, one may leverage the other, but in the end the fruit of the former is truly transformational.
As a necessary caveat, when I say Heavenly, I don't mean streets of gold, and gates of pearl, as the Kingdom is among us, Christ-centric in quality and better yet, billions of galaxies-like in possibilities!
In these next few blogs, we'll explore how this Kingdom allegory has been confused by language over time. For instance, often expressed as "a cattle on a thousand hills." I'm not sure what that will mean to the Alpha Generation, who likely will never see a cow, out least outside a corporate farm, nor visit a 1000 hills, apart from of our now threatened federal lands!
Until then, as I often share with my 30-50 year old Cabin Talk mentees, stay open!
I always enjoy your posts and I to dedicated my life to my community services Fire, EMS, Law Enforcement, Rescue