Would You Be Willing? (Update)

A few months back, God asked me a question.  Would I be willing to be unplanted over the next years, living moment by moment, to be prepared for the season when I would be planted?  It was not my ideal plan, but when I looked at God’s faithfulness and how He has led us this far, I decided instead of striving and stressing, that I would release my desire for security (the security you get when planted...something Rachel always fought for our kids when we were in ministry), and would surrender.

In my head, I pictured myself, Benjamin, and Brianna back at home in Ireland, not necessarily attached to a particular ministry or location as we reconnected to relationships local and outside of our immediate location (as we had been locked into our immediate area as we walked through looking after Rachel), and connect to what God was doing in different places (while still based in our area), do a missions trip or two (or three), while I continued to work on social media and writing.  It would be a season of discovery. This past month God interrupted that whole train of thought…or MY interpretation of what God was asking of me.

Let me back up just a moment.  While walking through the pain and loss of Rachel passing away, I knew that as a family there were things we needed to focus on to help us move forward.  The three priorities I am about to mention are anything new in my life, but I would say that I am more razor-focused on them.  Options and opportunities in my head have shrunk even more as we become more specific about what we believe God has for us and my family.  These three things guide my journey:

1. My relationship with God.  I love that after a busy week, I can lay in bed on a Saturday morning from 8:30-11:00 am (what I did this morning) and just ponder life with God.  I can share my heart and concerns and He speaks to me of His heart and helps me process the complexities of life, often with simple solutions, or even just enough to get through the next few hours.  Some days, it can be tough and that exchange is messy, but I always know where to go.  He is my Lord and my Friend.  This is what I am investing in more than anything.

2. My kids.  From the very beginning, I have communicated with my kids (I now have a fourth through marriage to Caleb, and it has been so much fun to climb mountains and go shopping with her and all that other stuff), they are my biggest ministry.  I have always tried to maintain this balance in life, and I specifically honor them because they made some incredible sacrifices through the choices we made over the past few years to do everything we could for Rachel so she could stay at home and do this journey together. It meant we closed the doors of our home to many activities and traveling as we sought the Lord together, studied His Word, and focused on Him and our relationship with Him.  As hard as that was, my children also have an incredible relationship with God, which has not only sustained them and helped them through this journey, but has found them ministering to adults through all this at times (I am boasting about them now).  I promised them that I would make decisions that would align with what they needed to do for the next stages of their lives.  Whatever is best for them…that is what we will do!

3. The Ministry.  For three years, before Rachel and I handed over the ministry of the churches in Portlaoise and Carlow, we wrestled.  If you have followed our newsletters or lives over the years, you will know it was not an easy decision, but one God kept leading us to because we felt God wanted to expand us and the ministry in ways that we just could not do while doing what we were doing (as well, it was time for those to whom we had invested into to step into their gifts and callings and for that, we had to step out of the way).  I recently told Benjamin and Brianna, “Family first and then ministry…but calling first and then marriage.”  They may not know specifically their future and their callings at this stage, but to follow God’s call is more important than marriage.  Too many have forfeited what God has called them to do because they wanted to be married.  Once married, you need to prioritize family before ministry, but the call of God goes much deeper than day-to-day ministry.  Discipleship. Leadership development.  Church Planting.  World Missions.  This is my calling.  It has been affirmed again and again even since being here in the States.  I am not sure how it will all come together into that place of “plantedness,” but it is my filter system that helps me stay on track, particularly in this season when emotions can be all over the place, AND I AM SO THANKFUL THAT I HAVE PEOPLE IN MY LIFE (AND GOD HAS BROUGHT A FEW NEW AMAZING PEOPLE WHILE HERE IN THE STATES), TO HELP ME PROCESS AND BE ACCOUNTABLE AND TO STAY INTENTIONAL!!!

I needed to share all this…because it is the heart and backdrop behind what I write next!

Three weeks ago, Brianna and I attended Campus Days at Charis Bible College, where Benjamin is currently doing year one (Caleb graduated in May 2023 just before he got married).  We knew that it was in her heart to attend and do at least one year sometime in the future (Rachel prayed that all three of her kids would attend, so it is cool to see this desire within them).  We went as an opportunity to sit in classes and experience worship there.

On the afternoon of the second day, we sat on the balcony, and as the meeting closed for dinner, God spoke to us simultaneously, with this weightiness of His presence.  As we were dismissed, we both looked at each other and said that she should apply and put down a deposit for September 2024!  Now Brianna still has another year of high school (secondary school), but after doing a bit of research, she has enough credits, that if she did summer school, she could graduate a year early and attend Charis this coming Autumn (Fall for all the Americans reading this).

Benjamin had already shared that he had an interest in graduating (Charis is a 2 year Bible College to graduate with an optional third year) and wished he could just do year two back to back, but we all said that was probably not going to happen at this stage, and that perhaps we would all return at a future date!  Ha!  God has a sense of humor and sometimes just laughs at our plans…when "we" think we can pull things together to do His will!

I also enquired further, as I am in the beginning stages of doing an online scholarship program with Charis designed for ministers, taking into account their ministry experience as part of the class credits needed to graduate.  If I were to work hard over the summer and finish the program, I would be allowed to enter into one of the third-year programs, which are very much like a Master’s Program.  This past week I got permission to sit in on a third-year class and have finished my application, which will be reviewed, and I will be granted an interview over the next few weeks!  For me, doing a third-year course will not only allow me the opportunity to process, invest, and discover what ministry can look like as James (as opposed to James and Rachel), but also enable me to study more about how to develop a missions organization and church planting structures that will enable for expansion and more people.  It is about “preparing the net” for the ministry that Rachel and I both saw that was ahead of us!

We have been spending the last three weeks, as a family and myself with God, processing what could this look like, how to deal with things like our home and vehicle back in Ireland, and a lot of seeking God about what funding for this giant step would look like!!  I still want to work on developing the teaching aspect of this ministry, both on social media and in writing, and feeling strongly from God that I should be doing that!  Both Brianna and I have a serious load of work to accomplish (which we have already started) to get up to speed for us to be able to start college this September!  It is a HUGE undertaking, but so was coming here just a few months after Rachel passed away, and we can see the practical wisdom of continuing to do this next year, as opposed to returning to Ireland and beginning the process of discovering our steps, only to uproot again for another school year down the road.  This is truly an adventure…and I believe God was giving me the “heads up,” a few months back!

In the church (I think particularly in the American church), where the emphasis can be on how difficult and evil the world is and is heading, amid grief and loss in our own family, I have become even more focused on the fact that there is a mission that we are ALL called to and a job to complete!  Rachel has passed on to her eternal glory, and I know she is reaping the rewards of a “life well lived,” now with Jesus, while watching and cheering us on, but I am not done yet and my kids are just getting started!  I have for over three decades tried to live my life in such a way that I would hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” from Jesus, but now I also have it in my heart that one day, when I see Rachel again face to face, can look her in the eye and say with confidence, “I finished well.  I stewarded what we started together, and I invested in our kids to see them know God and fulfill what He has called each of them to do.”

We so appreciate all the love, support, and prayers.  Please stand with us in prayer as we work through all the details.  I have already had conversations and prayers with some of the people close to us, our board of Grassroots International Ministries, and our good friend and pastor of the church we are involved with back in Ireland.  Moving forward, there is a general sense of peace, and I believe we are laying a foundation for greater opportunities to be part of what God is doing in the world today!

I know this update has been long, but I wanted to put it in context of the depths of what God has been doing in our hearts through this journey and how God has been leading us and preparing us for greater things!

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What To Do When Faith Makes No Sense

When you get shredded in life, insecurities surface. It has been said that grief and pain touch every aspect of your life. No stone is left unturned.

That is not just in connection with the passing away of a spouse, parent, sibling, child, or friend. Some losses are less severe than others and can quickly be recovered from, but loss takes many forms from career, relationships, moving house, or changing churches to name a few. The process of dealing with the impact of these losses can be likened to waves pounding a beach or layers peeled away from an onion. They are not one-time moments or events, and just when you think you are ready to move on, or even more so, everyone else is ready for you to just move on, you get hit again.

The passing of Rachel in October 2023 is the greatest loss I have ever experienced. The pain and the process are both deep and lengthy. I do not know all that lies yet before me in this process. d.

In 2016, we walked away from thirteen years of church planting and deep relationships. Some of those relationships remain close, but it is much different now in the ways that we relate and how often. A few years before that, we experienced two miscarriages. Rachel always felt there was a possible third, but these were confirmed pregnancies with an obvious physical termination of the baby. These are all deep painful experiences that have marked me. I am different because of them, and the way that I responded to each loss, differing based upon my experiences and understanding at the time, determined whether I would move forward with success in life or get stuck in the pain.

Just as love needs an opportunity to prove itself as unconditional, so does faith. Some people have confused faith as the ability to avoid difficulties and pain or the denial of its existence. These people become confused when they go through things. On the other side of the spectrum, people define faith as the grace and strength to endure hardship and pain, never expecting their faith to bring any change whatsoever to life's circumstances.

With love, we can say that we love each other all day, but until love has an opportunity to stick with someone and serve them when it is inconvenient, it is never truly love. A lifetime of deep love is the result of a series of opportunities over a long duration to put someone else before yourself. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the love extended.

If we only qualify faith by what we get in physical answers to it and put that as the highest measure of it exercised, then we have missed the genuineness of faith. The proof of faith can be in the results as we read stated in Hebrews 11:1, ”Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," but it is a mistake to limit faith to natural experiences or our timelines. Hebrews 12 would therefore not be a Hall of Faith but a Hall of Failure if we take that approach.

We see in Hebrews 12 two types of faith on display. Those who believed and saw what they believed for, and those who had faith and never saw in this earthly realm what they believed for. We read in the chapter that the eternal reward of faith is what they sought out.

My son called me once from Charis Bible College to tell me what a teacher had shared and how it had touched his heart. He said that he believed that when someone exercises faith, even though they may pass on to glory before they see it (or they pass away young and before they should), they get credit for that faith. It made so much sense to me and touched my heart when I heard those words.

How is that possible? Faith is not limited to time and space. It is eternal. And according to Hebrews 12, it is still accomplishing a work on this earth if exercised in the sincerity of someone's heart even if they are no longer present in this reality. Their faith still speaks today and has results long after they have left their existence on this earth.

What about those times we just fall short of exercising the faith that we have?  When we know the promise, but never see it when we knew, based upon the Scriptures and/or the prophetic, that we should?  That is where we can become paralyzed with guilt and condemnation, and we need to see beyond this natural world.

There are so many aspects to this pilgrimage we traverse while here on earth. God’s plans, our will, satan’s attacks, sin-filled world, lack of knowledge and understanding, and the list goes on. It is a complex web that does not always make sense. Faith reaches beyond the limitations of time and the natural world we live in. It reaches for the comforts of heaven and the love of the Father to heal and bring wholeness during pain and loss while persevering for better days, greater revelation, and more sustained miracles.

Faith is a decision to hold fast when things do not make sense. To embrace the One who is truth, when to the natural mind life seems vague, foggy, and without reason. Faith is not about churches, theologies, and head knowledge in a time of crisis. It is based upon something greater, and that is the person of Jesus Christ.

I get so tired of people’s theologies when I face life's challenges. Not that theology is not important, but is it God's truth or man's interpretation? It is amazing how often in a season of crisis, people climb into their lofty pulpits and preach as if they are full of fear themselves that what you might say or what you may be experiencing may rock their belief system. If it is true it will remain. Always remember, God is not afraid of mess. If anything, the mess can be an opportunity to bring about wholeness, change, and healing.

So what is faith when nothing seems secure? It is taking the time to draw near. It is not giving up. It is believing in the One who has the answers when the answers themselves allude you. It is the ability to remain and to just “be” with God when life makes no sense.

So before you do something radical or reactionary, stop and just "be." Learn what this means. It is easy to make life-altering decisions when chaos is within and without, but it takes courage to pause and ponder.

1. Pause. That is one of the greatest steps of faith you can sometimes take.

2. Reflect. Get understanding that comes through intimate times with God. Learn something new about yourself and your circumstances. Deal with stuff that has come to the surface before moving on.

3. Restore. Allow God to do the process of putting you back together. Let it be in His time and in His way. He is the God of restoration and restitution. Release the tendency to take matters into your own hands. Pain and loss can resurrect our felt need to control because the loss in and of itself is us losing control. Let go and let God as you never have before. This is our opportunity to go deeper with God than we would have if we had not gone through this loss.

A good friend once offered great wisdom. Never make major life decisions when in a pit. Sometimes you need to react to get out of that situation and change your situation, but most often, we go when we are supposed to stay and make radical decisions when we should wait. When we handed over the leadership of Life Church, both in Portlaoise and Carlow, everything was going amazing. That was the time to leave because it set the church and us up for greater success in the next steps, and thankfully, those people and the church are moving on strong in God.

So whatever you are going through right now, or whatever you will be going through connected to pain and loss in the future, see it as a stepping stone into something new. Do not let the pain be wasted. The only way that will happen is if you use that pain and loss to go deeper with God than you have ever been. You will never regret that!

Getting Back on Your Feet

The biggest obstacle we face in life when we experience loss is fear.

In 1989, I sat in history class watching TV with people all around the world as the first sledgehammers hit the Berlin Wall, which had separated East from West for decades. At that moment, something was deposited within my heart that I did not understand at the time. All my ethnic roots were from Eastern Europe and somehow I identified with the years of pain and isolation and wept at the site of joyful reunion and freedom experienced when the era of communism fell in that part of the world.

Fast forward seven years and after living in Budapest, Hungary for three months doing a YWAM DTS, followed by two months of outreach in Serbia and Croatia, I was making plans and attempting to raise money to move to Croatia as a missionary. This has not been my first trip to Eastern Europe. My first mission trip was to war-torn Croatia in 1993 when I was nineteen years old. The following year I was in Bucharest, Romania for two months.

It was a devastating blow when the funds did not come. I felt incredible rejection. My line of thinking was that there was a shortage of missionaries all around the world, and yet for some reason, God did not use me. I was a failure somewhere. I felt "the call" and the opportunity presented itself, and for some reason, I was just not good enough for God. All the self-hatred and places I saw my failures in my life were highlighted to me.

I got a job at a coffee house and settled into a life of confusion. I wrestled with God and beat myself up. Other days I attempted to encourage myself in the Lord. More than anything, I had to learn to be content in the moment.

It was not that long, just a year and God started to reveal that He truly had called me and that He was leading me in a certain direction, but I could not hear it. I did not want to. Trust had been broken by the circumstances. This is that place in our lives, where if we let it, fear takes over and shuts us down from proceeding.

When becoming the new president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, facing the crisis of a world war declared to the citizens of America this statement that also resounded around the world, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

I was stuck, and I know that God understood why. Years down the road, I understood why it never worked out. I never would have met the wife of my dreams. God wanted me in Europe, but based in Ireland, and not in Croatia. Through several devastating events, the people who were pioneering the work I was meant to join ended up back in the United States and the mission never got up and running. These were all bits of information that I was not privy to at the time. I had to simply trust.

There are two types of loss we usually find ourselves in. God closes the door for certain reasons (which was what I was going through at the time), and those that happen because of bad choices or ignorance on our part, we have an enemy out to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10), or that we live in a world of sin and corruption. No matter the reason, God is working to bring about good (Romans 8:28).

I did not believe that at the time. The views I had of myself and Him, though they were changing and becoming more in line with what God said about me, had not developed enough for me to be able to trust again. Fear had taken root and I was stuck.

The coffee shop that I worked at was located in an outdoor shopping mall. The local business employees used to come and get their coffee throughout the day. I had developed some kind of friendship with several of them.

I remember vividly the day Sal came in all boisterous in his usual Italian way. He worked at the tuxedo shop at the end of the mall. As far as I knew, he was not a follower of Christ personally, though he had a reverence and understanding of who God was through religion.

"This is a college person's job. What are you doing here? You have all these dreams to do missions and stuff. What would the Big Guy say? He would say get your %&!@ out there!"

And so, God's prophet spoke to me! I figured that if God could use a donkey to speak to Balaam when he could not see the angel before him trying to block his way, God could use Sal to challenge me to step out again into missions. It would have been likely that if that word came from someone at church or that I knew was strong in their relationship with God, I probably would have dismissed it. Sal just spoke to me right where I was at with the language that I needed to hear it.

Within months, after taking some time to get away and ask God where He wanted me to go, I was on my way to Texas. It was not Europe, which frustrated me at times, but it is where I met my wife and became the launching pad for us to move to Ireland in 1999.

I still face fear. I heard a preacher respond to someone who asked for prayer to remove the fear that he would have to pray then that they would die and go to heaven. We will always face fear. The question is how do we respond to it.

A few things that I have learned over the years, particularly from this experience, as it was my first great loss in life. Often we think of loss in terms of people dying, but loss comes in all forms, and if we do not deal with it, it will form a wall around our faith and ability to find life again after loss.

1. Be honest about where you are at. Be honest with God. He knows already what you are thinking and believing. If possible (though sometimes it may not be), find one or two trusted people to share your heart with and get GOOD counsel.

2. Find people who can empathize with you, but do not look for sympathy. Empathy is about people who care for you and weep with you, but also keep pointing you to what God says about you and your life. Sympathy is people who feel sorry for you. When I am going through loss and hardship I have learned to avoid people of sympathy. It feels nice to my flesh, but gets me stuck in self-pity and that is not what I need or what need when going through a hard time.

3. Dig into the Bible and find the truth of what God says about your circumstances and your future. Write them out. Put them in visible places. Say them out loud. Surround yourself with the promises of God.

4. Do not be too hard on yourself. I am all about taking personal responsibility for change in your life. You are the only one who can do that. Some people get stuck there and need to be challenged in this area, but if you are like me, you can over-internalize everything and defeat yourself as your own worst enemy. Remember, the only accusations that stick, whether from people or the voice of our spiritual foe, are the ones that we believe in ourselves. Choose to believe what God says about you and focus on that.

5. Give yourself time. I believe in miracles and instant healing and wholeness, but so often the internal battles that we face come with a long history of events and beliefs that need to be dealt with at a root level before we see a change in the fruit. I can count on one hand the times when God has stepped into my life and miraculously changed something on the inside of me, and usually when I do experience that kind of sudden miracle in my inward person, it is the result of months and years of investing in studying the Scriptures, listening to sermons, and pressing into that particular area before that "light bulb" moment. Most transformation comes a day at a time, line upon line, and precept upon precept (Isaiah 28:13).

If you find yourself dealing with any kind of loss and fear is knocking at your door, or maybe already inside your house making itself at home with its feet up on your coffee table, let these tools help you begin to take your life back and kick that fear out! Remember, fear will always be present. It is up to us how we respond to it, and if it is already there and has a foothold, just go through these steps. Find someone you trust who can pray with you and encourage you (not preach at you and shame you).

God wants to turn your loss into something beautiful, and He can when we (me and you) allow Him to.

*** The picture above is of Rachel on the Waterford, Ireland coast near Dungarvan.