One of the great takeaways from our Wikicclesia gathering last Saturday was hearing people from different walks of the Christ-life sharing what they see God doing on their journey. It was great to see lots of people I knew and some I had never met before describing a similar story to my own. It means that God’s is working sovereignly, above and beyond what us humans can coordinate, to pull his Church together.

We got to hear the story of Agent B, something I always love hearing. One of the ways he described what it is like following Jesus in his life was the image of “surfing”. I’ll loosely paraphrase:

“Listening to Jesus and living this life is a lot like surfing the waves. You don’t always know when the conditions are going to be just right for that perfect day of surf, so you always have to be ready and waiting. Keeping your eye on the horizon, watching weather patterns and hoping that the planets throughout the whole universe will perfectly align just so you can have a day out in the water. If you wait too long to respond, even 10 minutes, you could miss the opportunity.”

This was a watershed moment for me. Over the last 2 years, my own prayer life has been honed to a basic assumption that Jesus does care about me and actually reveals things to me when I listen to him. And what B described was the need not only to be intentional about listening, but also be just as intentional on diligently following through with action.

“Those who hear my words and put them into practice is like a man who builds his house on solid rock.” ( or in this case…’is like a bodacious surfer-dude’)

Sometimes I feel like I hear from Him, but I just add it to my to-do list and never get around to it. I see the waves are perfect, but I keep my surfboard polished and dry.

I’m ready to play in the waters.

Great times over the weekend.

Friday night was the big night - TMNT came out in theaters!!! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were an epicenter in my growing up years, and for the last several years they have been a means of deep, meaningful, personal reflection…and kick-butt ninja action!

The flick was CGI, so you felt like the 5th turtle as you watched mutant turtles with bulging muscles swinging and flipping across NYC’s skyline. The story was all about how after the Turtles defeated the Shredder, they couldn’t find a real reason to stay a family - so they begin to drift apart. What unites them is learning to appreciate each other’s unique strengths, rather than using each other to defeat evil. An interdependent team of 4 rather than a 4 person (turtle) team. Sounds a lot like Ephesians 4! (What’s with the four’s in this post?)

So in honor of the ninja turtles, me, my bro, and some others dressed up in ninja turtle garb and ran into the movie theater, with ninja kicks and “hi-ya!”s. When all the kids saw us, they literally flipped out, especially the younger ones. Some actually thought we were REAL ninja turtles, and one asked me if I liked pizza. We had a pre-show ninja fight, which got us really pumped up for the flick - and got the kids screaming with delight. I’m sure the parents loved us…

Saturday was our second ACU “Discover Abilene” day. Its basically a day of missional prayer, where students and anyone else interested head out all over town to “see what God is already doing” in our city. We sent them out in 28 groups of 2, and gave each a certain zone to pray over. Agent B apparently saw one of these groups take a picture of Obi Wan’s house, which is just goes to show that God truly is placing “workers (or secret agents) in his harvest field” (Luke 10:2).

As we discussed on Saturday, its not that there isn’t enough work to be done, its just that there aren’t enough harvesters!

Trina and I went down to an area with a lot of retail and coffee shops, as well as a lot of post WWII houses and a new uppity neighborhood with huge lawns and sparkling cars. Among houses, we saw old-run-downs next to old-but-maintained, with huge mansions-with-corvettes just a couple of blocks away. It made me wonder what all these people could really have in common.

At one of the coffee shops we visited, there is a fountain that is usually turned off. What good is a well that has no water? Trina and I discovered that part of our job as missionaries is to find those wells that don’t have any water, and to help those at these dry wells learn how to retrieve it.

Christ is the living water - and people dig down to find a distorted version of that life at coffee shops or mini malls, or sometimes at church buildings or lots of other places people gather. But entertainment and coffee is not the deepest, most satisfying aquifer we can find. Missionaries call on people to dig deeper at their wells; to discover the living water that awaits them - that lives within them!

Today is Project: Graduation at ACU.  It’s Centennial year, I have been amazed at the BIGGNESS of this whole event.  Megatrons all over campus, tents, chairs…it will be something to behold.

Another cool thing: mom is coming into town later today, and will be staying with the Mackey’s, the house we are moving into in a week or two.  It will be good for her to meet them, to know what loving people we are moving in with.

Another really cool thing!:  Yesterday was the second convening of the Secret Agents in Abilene, Agent B, the Librarian, Jack-of-all-trades, and myself.   It was great just sharing ideas and laughter and secret agent stuff with each other.  What I found most interesting was that when we began praying for those who don’t know the Lord, a few of us realized that we were ministering to the same people!

This could have two meanings:  either we are permeating the entire popularion of Abilene’s lost and therefore running into each other, or we are focusing on too narrow a population, while remaining totally blind to the thousands of others who are lost in our fair mother city.  Now, I know that just a couple of secret agents for the chief executive officer of the universe is not the only forces he is working with - but why should we settle for only seeing one sector of our city touched by the Gospel?  Why not at least get to know people from other neighborhoods?

Gotta love these guys, because more than anyone else I know, they are looking for new people who need to know the Lord, and making deep commitments of time, resources and love into these people letting them know that they matter to God.  These are the kind of guys I want to hang around.  Our secret agent group is planning to meet more regularly for prayer and hamburgers.  Not a bad deal.