Stories of Transformation: Part 1

Sunday night Missio Lux got to experience a baptism of great significance. Every baptism is important; a giant step forward in our ability to witness to Jesus' work in our life, but this one holds a very special place in my heart.

Fran is a man who has an important job in a well known Seattle company. He has always done all the right things: come to church, supported his family, and serving others in need.

However, for most of his life, he felt like he stood outside the circle. He saw the passion that others had in their faith and felt like he just wasn't worthy to experience it too.

God is so merciful, however. Fran hit some trouble and sank to a deep low. He came to me for some prayer in desperation to see his life be different. As we prayed, the Loving Heavenly Father showed him his heart for Fran, his presence throughout his WHOLE life, and his invitation to be part of his Kingdom family.

I was privileged to literally see a transformation take place instantly. All the old hindrances literally fell off and the glorious presence of the Lord came forward. He is a changed man!

He tells me often of the many people who tell him, "You look different." His physical appearance is different, and his presence is full of peace now. He is present in a new way to his wife and to his family, and his witness is appealing. He is so hungry to grow, reading Scripture day and night, praying with his wife and playing board games with his family, available in ways that he has never been present.

I feel expectant for how God is going to use Fran for the Kingdom! It will be fun to watch and see how God is going to paint the masterpiece of his life.

Check it Out! Missio Lux Packaging 40,000 Meals!

See it for yourself! The fun, the impact and the opportunity to reach out to serve the glocal world! Over 200 people came together from the Sammamish Plateau area to brave the weather and the challenge to help 110 at risk children from Sierra Leone eat for a year.

And, we have enough left over to help 3 area food banks with generous checks of $500 each!

Giving Thanks for the Small Stuff

It’s that time of the year that we are reminded to give thanks for all the blessings we experience. The Bible teaches us to be thankful, and reminds us regularly to make it a part of our daily ritual. 1st Thessalonians 5:16-17 says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

I have been learning to see God’s big answers in the small things. I heard the phrase recently, “Don’t despise the small beginnings” and it hit me like a jolt. I have big dreams and am often asking God for the big answers, but I knew that I was to begin to see his big answers in the small beginnings. There is a seed in them that will turn into the bigger answers.

Think about the situation the disciples found themselves in when they had a very hungry crowd on their hands, but only had a young boys’ lunch of 5 loaves of bread and some fish. All they could see was the hungry crowd, but Jesus saw something different. He saw the answer to the crowd’s hunger in the young boy’s lunch.

He took the loaves and fishes and the Scripture tells us that “he gave thanks, blessed them and broke them.” We all know what happened! Jesus continued to break up the same lunch over and over until it turned into a banquet for thousands!

We can learn to the do the same. Our role is to give thanks and to bless. Where we only see lack, Jesus sees multiplication. We can learn to do this with our money, our energy, our time, and our food.

Begin to practice this principle this week during Thanksgiving as we are regularly reminded to “give thanks!” See how the small seed of your thanks turns into a multiplication of God’s kingdom.

Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100

Celebrate Recovery Retreat

I want to celebrate the amazing ministry of our Celebrate Recovery Leaders. They serve selflessly week in and week out, never taking a break even for a holiday in case someone comes who is need of a loving touch and a caring person.

Saturday my ministry partner, Sharon and myself, led a leaders retreat to pour into them a portion of what they pour into others. Sharon and I are delighted to have a kingdom ministry of Celebrate Recovery shared by Missio Lux and its parent church, Pine Lake Covenant.

Our theme for the retreat was "The Heart of the Father." This has been a significant theme for me as my Heavenly Father meets me lately and shows me that his love for me goes far deeper than I have ever experientially realized.

He gives us a picture of that Father in the parable of the Compassionate Father. Wait, you don't know that parable~that's because it was severly misnamed by someone who needed to experience greater amounts of the Father's love. We know this because he named the story the Prodigal Son, focusing on the sons failure, rather than the compassion of his Father.

The Father didn't shame or condemn his son for his poor choices, but instead came out running at record speed, threw his arms around him, called for his coat, his ring and his shoes to be restored to him, and then threw a gigantic party for his son! What a welcome he received.

We also watched a clip from Blood Diamonds, a very moving segment of a Father who had been searching everywhere to find his son, only to find him as a brainwashed child soldier who was pointing a gun at his head. He didn't run in fear, but kept speaking to his son about his true identity and his love for him. Eventually the boy put down the gun and fell crying into his arms.

We listened to a song by Kim Walker called "Oh, How He Loves Me," where she sings that if grace were an ocean, we would all be sinking, and heaven reaches down and gives us a sloppy wet kiss. Her songs rings through my head these days as I experience deeper waves of my Father's love.

We reflected on where we weren't yet living life fully with our Father. Then we took the powerful and living Scriptures and confessed our lack and replaced it with the full generosity of the Father.

And, we committed to support and hold one another accountable to continue the journey of freedom to the Father's heart as we experience the abundant life Jesus purchased for us.

Even though Sharon and I were leading the retreat, it was a time of rest and peace for us as we experienced that deeper place with our Father and one another.

We Did It: 40,000 Meal Packaged for At Risk Children in Sierra Leone

The food assembly was an awesome gift. Despite snow showers throughout the day, over 200 people came together to package lentils, spice, chicken and rice for at risk children in Sierra Leone that won't eat otherwise. We got to see a video of the children eating their lentils, spice, chicken and rice and it was delightful to see how they were enjoying what they were eating!

We enjoyed the lentils, spice, chicken and rice too! After we finished up all the packing, we transformed our work tables into a table for the meal. Off came the equipment, on came the tablecloth, everyone grabbed a chair, literally, and we enjoyed the stew!

espite putting together 40,000 meals tonight, our missio isn't finished. On Sunday, December 12th we are going to three area food banks to bring checks and prayers to bless their work in feeding hungry people. The overflow of funds from tonight will be divided for the 3 food banks so they can buy what they need.

Thanks, Children of the Nations, for your valuable kingdom partnership with Missio Lux!

How a Child's Lunch turns into 40,000 Meals

Tomorrow Missio Lux is hosting a Food Packaging Missio, by partnering with Children of the Nations. This is a fun, but impactful opportunity for families, neighborhoods, sports teams, service clubs and missio communities to come together to package meals for the least of the least children in Sierra Leone. Each meal provides a perfect protein with exact nutritional support for the children to grow up as their bodies are meant to grow.

Amazingly, our small start of change in banks, (the child's lunch) has turned into 40,000 meals already donated.

How did this happen? Good question, I would love to answer it!

Missio Lux has a unique financial structure. We live sacrificially by not renting a building, paying staff salaries, or investing in programs, but instead free up 75% of the funds for each missio community to live out their missio purpose.

When we decided to host this missio, we asked the different missio communities if they would like to contribute something towards the food assembly. This would give them the opportunity to freely ask guests to come without worrying if they would contribute to the funds to purchase the 40,000 meals.

I guess I expected a few hundred here or there, but instead the missio communities donated so generously that we came within a few hundred dollars of our $10,000 goal!

It has created an overflow of funds so that we hope to be able to give at least $1,000 each to three area food banks so help stock their shelves, thereby creating a GLOCAL (global and local) opportunity to extend lavish generousity.

Our friend Fraser from COTNI (Children of the Nations) asked me a couple of weeks ago how our fund raising was going, and it made me almost tearful with joy to be able to tell him that we had raised close to our full goal, and would most certainly have it by our start date!

We have it and much more.

I hope you can stop by tomorrow (or if you are reading this from afar--check out our videos in a couple of weeks) to see how God multiplied a child's lunch into a meal for thousands of hungry children in Sierra Leone and in our own community.

Healing Prayer Training: a Red Hot Center

Healing Prayer is increasingly becoming a Red Hot Center where God's presence is real and calling people to a deeper relationship with himself.

We held our first of three weekend trainings this past weekend. People walked through the door in eager expectation of what they were to learn about God and healing. We were so excited about a group of 12 that came from Mt. Vernon, almost 2 hours north of Seattle. They came because they saw what happened to the woman who came to last year's training; she had a huge breakthrough in her faith as well as experiencing a significant healing in her body which resulted in a surgery being cancelled at the last minute because the problem area had disappeared.

When God was calling me to start Missio Lux, he showed me that healing would be one of the most significant ways that unbelieving people would come to know how much he loves them and wants to be in relationship with them.

I have seen glimpses of this, but also realize that praying for healing is one of the ways that the Body of Christ comes alive. I like to say, "Living Kingdom is living Revival!" When we are following the call of the King to partner with him to bring kingdom to earth, our faith is increased through taking big risks where the King shows us and shows off.

The King showed off at the training. We were studying the different ways that Jesus heals so we would be clear that there is no formula to healing and calling people up who were willing to be prayed for in the same ways.

First, we laid hands on a woman's heart which was beating very irregularly. It was also affecting her breath. She felt her body come into a place of great peace.

Next we spoke to a woman who had a challenged elbow. She began to move freely back and forth after the prayer.

We followed Jesus' example of praying for a deaf man by putting our fingers in his ears. Our nearly deaf friend said his ears were popping all afternoon as he felt movement in them.

We asked for those that had sight issues as we studied how Jesus prayed for a blind man by spitting on his fingers and putting them on his eyes. We had two brave volunteers who put their hands over their eyes and I put my fingers with spit on them on their hands. One woman said that instantly the cars in the parking lot came a lot clearer.

I am looking forward to our Healing Prayer Worship Service Tuesday as we lean into the desire more and more to develop a significant RED HOT CENTER where people can meet, experience and be healed by God the Consuming Fire!