Guest Blog: Nancy Jumper vs. the Prayer Path

I signed myself up for a slot in CrossPointe’s Prayer Path experience, and arrived at my appointed time with two family members. We thought we’d enter at the same time so as not to mess up the schedule. We were told that it would be a much better experience if we staggered our entry by 10 min each to make it personal. However, instead of accepting and enjoying that, it became a chief focus of distraction.

My frustration about us entering separately was all I thought about as I started through the labyrinth. The peaceful voice on the “Path Tour Guide CD” became the voice of my siren. The more she beckoned me with her silky voice to “relax and let go of the noise of distraction in my head” the more agitated I became that others were entering, but not the last of my party. By the time I got to Station #3 – where I was prompted to tightly hold a pebble in my fist, attach my cares and worries to it, then symbolically lay those in Jesus’ lap by releasing the pebble to float into a bucket of water – I realized I couldn't do it! I defiantly shoved the pebble in my pocket and carried on to the next station. At each stop the CD’s mesmerizing music, peaceful voice, and impactful activity got nothing from me but snotty responses and harried glances around the room to see if my son had finally entered.

About Station #5, I saw him enter and reverently start his journey at Station #1. This calmed my heart as I completed that stop, and I realized I needed to go back now to #3 and drop the pebble. I went to the bucket of water and tried to drop the pebble…but again failed. Still too much static in my head! Although I knew I was tainting my experience…I wasn’t yet able to let go. Off I went to continue with Station #6 – Communion. To sit on a pillow in God’s presence and prepare myself for the sacrament of communion in grateful recognition of his son’s broken body and spilled blood only magnified my inner conflict over the pebble.

I sat there a long time wrestling with myself, with Him…and with that blasted pleasant voice on the CD! I needed a reason to let go! I needed a justification! After a while, God whispered to me that there was no reason or justification in his love and sacrifice for me, he just wanted to do it. Whoa! The velvety-voiced CD lady couldn’t have said it better. When I finally came to the point of WANTING to let go, His Holy Spirit did the rest and took the angst from my heart and head. I had a lovely communion and got up to continue.

I knew my first stop had to be to go back to the afore-dreaded Station #3 and get that pebble out of my pocket and into Jesus’ lap. And this time… Success! I revisited a couple more stations as well…then moved through the maze actually engaging in what God had intended for me at each stop. Near the end I was prompted to look at myself in a mirror, take note of the image I saw, then try to grasp what God sees when he looks at me.

I found it was unexpectedly uncomfortable to stand and look at myself as I tried to think about what God saw, so I leaned to the side. When I did this, I realized that the image now in the mirror was of others around me going through The Prayer Path. I was seeing the life that was happening all around me. Stunned, I realized that is one image God sees when he looks at me. He sees the people and circumstances all around me, and how He can impact them through me.

And so when I left, I realized I’d fought the battle of the noise in my head against the experience of the prayer path. I also realized this is a familiar battle that I fight every minute of every day. Although not always accompanied by a CD directing my steps and not always victorious; I am convinced that as I fight these skirmishes, the Holy Spirit works as a knight-in-shining-armor dispatching my dragons.

Thanks for the profound reminder.

--Nancy Jumper

Fortune Cookie Faith - One Week Later

A week ago, I shared with everyone about the lessons I learned from Hebrews 11:1. Among the thoughts I shared was a translation of the first phrase, "Now we know that faith is the substance of things hoped for". In contemporary context, it might read like this:

Faith is the confident trust in God that provides the bedrock upon which our hopes are founded.

I also shared with you about the difference between a hope (a desire with an expectation that it will come to pass) and a wish (a desire that is deemed unattainable), and how those might look in the context of our faith journey.

One week later, how has this played out in your spiritual journey? Do you view faith in a different way than you did a week earlier. Did it clarify? Did it confuse?

Share.

This Thursday and Friday Only

You have the opportunity this Thursday evening or Friday during the day to experience the Prayer Path.

Pause for a moment and consider your surroundings. What do you hear? The hum of the fan on your computer? Coworkers talking? It doesn't feel much like Holy Week.

As you read this, there is a labrynth set up at Crosspointe. A prayer path. A chance to pull away and let go of all of the things that run through the mind.

Stress. Worry. Guilt. Fear. The grocery list. Did I remember to feed the dog? (Yeah. They all get equal billing in my brain.)

Three years ago when I went through it, I wasn't sure what to expect.

We walked in. Took off our shoes. Twelve stations. A headset with a CD. I pushed "play."

Nothing prepared me for what God did in me. I didn't even know I had stuff to let go of. By the time I had completed the twelve stations, Easter suddenly seemed so real. I'm not talking about the historical event of it. I'm talking about changes in my soul. There's so much stuff that we carry with us every day. (Way more than the grocery list and the dogs.) The prayer path was an opportunity to let that stuff go. A time for Jesus Christ to be real and present in my soul.

As a blog post, this falls short in describing the beauty of it. There are a few more spots left if you want to go through it. E-mail Kylie and David and grab one.

More

We began our new series Sunday entitled ONE. The tag line to this series is that you and I were never meant to be little kings and queens ruling our tiny little kingdom of ONE. As our band so beautifully rocked for us on Sunday, "we were meant to live for so much more." This desire to be part of something bigger and more profound than our own existence was instilled in us by God. Unfortunately, we often settle to live within our own little kingdoms and never experience the transcendent life that God offers. What holds you back from pursuing more in your life? Why do we tend to settle for less when God offers us so much more?

Life by the Moment

We spoke this morning about the importance of living life by the moment. Each of has millions if not billions of moments in our lives. Among those moments are those few life-changing moments. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could learn to identify the life-changing moments from the ordinary moments? How would our lives be different if we were able to do just that? What challenge do you face as try to treat every moment of our lives as the gift they are from God?

Maximum Potential

Our focus today was on the final part of our vision statement: Thru imaginative design create relational learning environments and strategic missional partnerships to move everyone toward their full potential in Christ. In order to reach our full potential in Christ we must have a concentrated focus in our lives. A focus on recapturing our passion, a focus on owning the process and a focus on moving from stewing to doing. Which of those focuses is most difficult for you and why? Which is the simplist and why?

Multisensory Communion

What are your thoughts on yesterday's multisensory communion gathering?

Taking Another Look

After God created the first man, God quickly concluded, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Have you ever wondered what exactly was that aloneness? After all, even before Eve, Adam wasn’t the only being in the garden. There were the animals and God himself was there. God must have meant that the man should not be the only one of his species. Adam needed someone to identify with in his humanity.

But here's the wrinkle. We commonly read these words as though God meant "It is not good for the man to be lonely." The biblical translators steer us here by substituting the word "man" where the text originally says "him." Hearing it that way justifies our pursuit of friendships and partners to quell our loneliness. And in a sense, we're right. We were not created for a solitary existence. I wonder if the translators haven't done us a disservice in their translation that causes us to miss part of the impact of what God said. What if what God meant was that it was not good for him, for God himself, for the man to be the only one. It does not suit God's purposes for a person to exist in isolation from others.

How might this alternate interpretation change how we view relationships and relational learning environments? What is your gut response to what you learned on Sunday?

Imagination and the Imago Dei

Week three of our pure, fresh and simple approach to church centered on the first three words of our vision statement, "Thru imaginative design create relational learning environments and strategic missional partnerships to move everyone toward their full potential in Christ." My approach was simple: support the idea from the Scriptures and tie it to our mission of loving God, loving others and living out loud.

We are imaginative because creativity is part of the Imago Dei (image of God) in each of us. Just as God named and then separated as part of the creation process, so Adam named and separated the animals. It was perhaps the first right brain, left brain activity. Right brain (creative) naming the animals and left brain (analytical) separating things like the 52,000 different beetles God created into categories.

The beautiful tie to our mission statement is that in the Great Commandment we are told to love God with all of our heart, our soul and our mind. The word Jesus used for mind is often translated imagination. It refers directly to the right side of our brain rather than the left side (a different word in the original language.

I'm interested in your reaction to what you heard? How do you respond to imaginative ministry design? Is it exciting to you, terrify you or something in between? How might it play into your desire to invest and invite people to join our faith journey?

P=MV2

This past Sunday, Pastor Dave shared a simple equation...or not so simple if physics isn't your thing:

P = MV2; momentum equals mass times velocity squared.

Momentum is what gives us impact; in our case, impact within our community.

Mass refers not to size or volume, but rather weight and density. One of our BHAG's is to double our worship attendance; not for the sake of increasing our volume/size, but to give more weight to what we do, to create a greater impact.

Velocity, as Pastor Dave shared, is speed with direction. In our case the direction is our vision statement:

Thru imaginative design create relational learning environments and strategic Missional partnerships to lead everyone to their full potential in Christ.

So the question of the week is: If our vision provides the direction for velocity, what provides the speed?

Thoughts anyone?