CRM works to create movements of committed followers of Jesus in nations all around the world. This blog captures our stories, learnings, photos, videos, and more. Welcome! Find out more at www.crmleaders.org
Today weâre launching something new in our summer series called Connecting Kids With Jesus. This three-part series is designed to help you discover new and creative ways to help kids pray and connect with God.
The questions weâll answer are: How do we provide a space where kids can experience climbing into Jesusâ lap to hear his voice on their own? And what do we do once we get them there?
Jump on over to blog.crmleaders.org to start to engage childrensâ imaginations and help them hear from God.
Our devotional series continues on the blog this week. The Pharisees were notorious for questioning Jesus because they were so committed to what they thought they knew. How often do we make this same mistake - closing ourselves off to God's work for the sake of what we think we know about him?Â
Let's allow ourselves to be surprised by our Savior. Read more in today's Friday Devotional: blog.crmleaders.org
We were off, two teams of excited children running down the sidewalk anxious to figure out the clues in this divine âTreasure Huntâ.
Clue 1: Black Cap
Clue 2: The Sun
Clue 3: Boulevard
Clue 4: Snake Tattoo
Clue 5: Aisle 3
The prize: A blue "First Place" ribbon
Who would get the prize?
Thirty minutes earlier these children sat quietly around their tables listening to Godâs answers to their request for clues. Jose saw in his mind a black cap and the word âBoulevardâ, Leslie heard the word âThe Sunâ, my daughterâs snapshot image was a snake tattoo and an impression of âAisle 3â. They wrote each clue down on their papers and then the excitement began.
Drama had been the norm in some of these childrenâs lives; their parents or relatives had been rescued out of gangs through Christâs powerful love. They now found their community at our church, Praise Chapel. But this was a different drama; this was the anticipation of wonder.
Excited chatter rose as they compared clues, figuring out where to go.
âThe Sun, BoulevardâŠSunset Boulevard!â shouted Jose.
âThereâs a grocery store on Sunset, letâs go to Aisle 3.â
âA black cap, a black cap, a black cap!!!!â
I was running to keep up. On the way we stopped everyone with a black cap asking if they had a snake tattoo, first in English then in Spanish. No one yetâŠ
âKeep going, keep going, thereâs the grocery store!â
Onto aisle three and there was the shop assistant, no cap, no tattoo, and no one else on the aisle. What next?
âLetâs look down all the aisles,â Leslie piped up.
And there, on the liquor aisle, were two hip, very gay men scanning the shelves for the nights libations ⊠and one of them was wearing a black cap.
Jose ran up to him. âHey you have a black cap!â The man was taken aback. He looked at me questioningly. Before I could explain my daughter chimed in, âYou have tattoos! Do you have a snake tattoo?â
Disarmed by the childrenâs innocence he rolled up his sleeve to reveal an enormous snake winding its way round his wrist, up his forearm, across the bicep, and glowering at us from his shoulder. I showed the man our papers with the five clues. On Sunset Boulevard, a grocery store with an âAisle 3â, a man with a black cap and snake tattoo.
âWe asked God to give us clues and hereâs what he gave us. We think you might be who weâre looking for, what do you think?â He lifted his sunglasses and looked at me in amazement. Leslie, four years old, couldnât help herself, her face full of wonder, âYouâre the treasure weâve been looking for! God loves you so much and wants you to know that you have first place in his heart.â
She handed him the blue âFirst Placeâ ribbon. Tears welling up in his eyes, the man replied: âThank you, thank you... you donât know how much this means to me.â
We all returned to church with excitement, eager to share with the other group who Godâs treasure was, who had heard the message of grace, and whose broken heart God had begun to bind up through these childrenâs wonderful obedience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alastair Rundle used to live and serve among the poor in downtown Los Angeles with his wife and two children. Today Alistair and his family are working to see a movement of God started in Redding, California.
We borrowed this photo from a staff couple working in East Africa â a place where dare and risk are part and parcel to effective, compelling ministry. Where do you need to be daring today?
For a few weeks now weâve been working behind the scenes to get our new blog site up and running. Well, itâs finally ready!! Keep following us here on Tumblr for more notes, stories, and inspiration, but also jump over to our blog for the latest devotionals and articles.
Todayâs Friday Devotional can be found at blog.crmleaders.org.
Three simple steps to connect with those closest to you
When a scribe asked Jesus about the greatest commandment of all, he said there are actually two: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:25-28). When pressed to define what he meant by âneighborâ, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan â a man who went out of his way to show love and care to someone who, by cultural standards, he should not have even associated with.
For most of my life of following Jesus Iâve taken the first commandment very literally. Iâve learned about God, read Scripture, worshipped, and prayed. But the second commandment I always read a bit more figuratively. I took it as more of a suggestion than a direct order, that is until the last couple of years.Â
Recently Iâve started to wonder: Could God have strategically planned for my family to live in our neighborhood as ambassadors of his kingdom? Is it possible that Iâve lived the past 20 years walking with Jesus and completely overlooking my greatest mission field â the people right outside my front door?
A fellow CRM staff person once told me, as we walked the city where she ministers, that we carry the presence of heaven wherever we walk. The fact is that Jesus has promised us his authority, and we are accountable to use what weâve been given. Jesus longs for us to be the sweet fragrance that draws all nations to himself. He wants us to pray for our streets, our communities, our cities.
Where my family and I live is no accident, and Iâm ashamed that Iâm just now picking up on that. Over the past two years my wife and I have been asking God to show us what it would look like to love our neighbors. If you are anything like me, I needed a place to start.
Here are three tips to start living out the second commandment right where you live:
1. Start with prayer
Nothing good gets started until we connect with the most strategic mind in the universe: Jesus. My first step (no pun intended) was to walk up and down the streets around our house praying for the families I knew and thanking God for the things I saw. I noticed toys in front yards and said hello to people as I passed â people who probably thought I was crazy since I appeared to be talking to myself. I asked God to draw people out of their houses.
Sometimes nothing noticeable happened, and other times a specific word or feeling would come to mind. I trusted that this might be God showing me how to pray, so I started to bless my neighborsâ marriages, their safety, their health, their kids. As time went by I developed a care and concern for our neighbors, and I caught a vision for how their lives might change if Jesus was a part of them.
2. Draw a map
Itâs hard to love your neighbors when you donât know their names. Iâm really bad at names, and embarrassingly I often resort to, âHey there!â I started using Evernote to jot down names and facts about our neighborsâ lives, and now I look like a superhero.
Another thing that helped us was to draw a crude map of our immediate streets and write down the names of people we knew lived nearby. This was a great practice that helped us remember names, and it also acted as a prayer prompt.
3. Play âout frontâ
If you are lucky enough to have a front yard, start âplayingâ and spending time out front rather than inside or out back. We often set up our lawn chairs in the front and watch the kids ride their scooters, throw the frisbee, or play tag. Itâs amazing how many kids will start to come around by just playing out front. One of the main attractions was picking up a used Power Wheels and letting all the kids take rides.
So get creative. Even if you donât have kids, get out some sidewalk chalk, play with your dog, have breakfast on the front porch, or buy a cheap fire pit and have âbonfiresâ in the front yard. The key is that the environment changes when we spend time in front of our homes playing and connecting. It creates a safe place for others to strike up a conversation.
3a. Host a neighborhood BBQ
Okay, this oneâs extra credit. When youâre ready to really lean in on loving your neighbors, start spreading the word to the surrounding streets that youâre hosting a community BBQ. We tried this in our neighborhood, and the simple shared event allowed us to have conversations, gain access into the lives of those around us, and show love. Since our first BBQ, Iâve painted my neighbor's living room, built furniture, coached the kidsâ soccer team⊠all of which has given me an opportunity to begin spiritual conversations. Because of the trust built, I can talk about Jesus in a casual, personal, and meaningful way.
This is our last and final day of the prayer movement series. We have so enjoyed sharing this week of powerful prayer with you, and we are excited to see how you will use these building blocks to create pathways for God to work in radical ways in your context. Remember, this is just the beginning, and itâs not meant to be done alone. Now is the time to continue in obedience, press on in faith, and invite others to join you!
As you move forward, it will be helpful to notice when the movement of God remains incomplete and truncated. This is usually due to a lack of repentance and forgiveness in the Body of Christ or to a lack of endurance in travailing prayer.
What is travailing prayer?
Travailing prayer is a form of intense intercession given by the Holy Spirit whereby an individual or group is gripped by something that grips God's heart. The enemy relishes the fact that we tend to give up easily and release our intensity â that we allow our faith to be undermined. Travailing prayer is a kind of laboring prayer that does not give up until God has birthed what he intends to bring about. When we love something or someone, we donât throw one or two prayers up on their behalf. We pound on the gates of heaven until something changes.
Travailing prayer is sustained by continued revelation from the Holy Spirit and by receiving the heart of Jesus for his people. We can never love like he loves. We can never pursue freedom and the lost with his tireless energy and creativity. So we must allow him into our emotions to sustain our travailing prayer.
JUMP IN
How badly do you desire freedom for yourself and for your community?!
As you move forward using the activities of the last several days â time in worship, listening and waiting, confessing sin and repenting, and acting in the opposite spirit â continue to lean into Jesus in a new way. Acknowledge that he loves you, your family, your friends, and those around you in your context more than you ever could.
Invite his revelation, and persist in praying what you hear from him.
âAfter three days they found [Jesus] in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.â
- Luke 2:46-47 (NIV)
MEDITATION
My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today?
But not my mother. âIzzy,â she would say, âdid you ask a good question today?â That difference â asking good questions â made me become a scientist.
- Isidor Isaac Rabi
When we ask questions, we open up a world that was hidden to us before. We find a depth of sacredness, even in our everyday life, that was previously unknown. As we ask questions, we learn to become good listeners.
In Luke 2, after a frantic search, Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple listening to the teachers, hearing the stories of their ancestors, discussing the reason that he and his family had trekked 80 miles from their hometown of Nazareth to the city of Jerusalem. The teachers were probably reflecting on the Passover, the great event when God heard the cry of his people and rescued them from an oppressive regime. They might have dipped into the story of the Exodus and the 40 year desert wanderings and discussed the ups and downs and trials and tribulations of the journey. From the posture of listening attentively, Jesus was able to ask insightful questions â questions that amazed the wise Jewish scholars.
I am currently part of a team and living in a township called Soshanguve in South Africa. Our neighbors have experienced a country engulfed in horrific segregation that gave the white citizens all the power. These same neighbors voted in 1994 in the first fully free democratic election. Since then, the country and its people have worked steadily to recover from the turbulent past. During our time here, we have discovered how important it is to tune in to the unfolding journey that the country has been on, to hear the stories of our neighbors who have experienced the many changes, to be attentive to the cries of those who are still oppressed, and to listen to the heartbeat of God for this place.
This posture of listening has helped us to appreciate the bigger picture and to better understand our friends in Soshanguve as they struggle with poor quality education, unemployment, a massive gap between rich and poor, and a variety of other difficult issues. Hearing their stories has helped us to love our neighbors better.
This kind of listening is critical in a cross-cultural setting like ours, but it is a deeply powerful part of following Jesus no matter where we live. Good listening allows us to ask questions like âWhat is God already doing here?â and âWhat is my role in it?â Good listening creates opportunities to express the love of God and to respond to need in ways that honor and bless. Good listening prepares us, just like young Jesus in the Temple, for a life of living out the good news of the Kingdom of God.
QUESTIONS FOR APPLICATION
Would you consider yourself a good listener? As you think about the people you will meet during the coming day, is there someone who might benefit from being listened to?
Do you have practices in your life that help you to listen for the leading of God? If so, what is God saying to you today? If not, experiment with taking a few minutes in silence to listen for Godâs direction and inspiration.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Horrocks and his wife, Debbie, and the 30-week bump are originally from Scotland and currently live in Soshanguve, South Africa. They have been serving with InnerCHANGE since 2014.
Once we have become aware of the strategies of the enemy and have seen and repented of our own complicity with them, we are now ready to resist! This is when things get fun, and our enemy and his minions of evil get scared. This is when we learn to operate in the opposite spirit of whatever demonic activity we have discerned.
Spiritual warfare is not something that happens purely on the âspiritual planeâ, but it intersects with our life in real and practical ways. This means it involves resisting temptation and complicity with darkness.
For example, if we have discerned that the enemy uses a poverty mindset in our neighborhoods to limit and oppress people, we want to take concrete steps to behave in the opposite manner. We demonstrate the lavish generosity of God, even when it hurts and is scary. It is important to tackle lies with opposite positive action.
And be verbal about it! Lead your community, family, or friends through actions that are counter to the enemyâs lies that you have been laboring under. Partner with other churches or communities to confront these lies and act together to set your context and the people in it free.
JUMP IN
Based on the exercise in sin and repentance you did yesterday, select one of the corporate sins you have become aware of this week. Spend ten minutes in worship like you did on day two, and then remain in silence with God considering the corporate sin you selected. Take time to repent again of that sin, and ask God to search your heart for any lingering presence of it.
Then, ask him for creative ways you might practically come against that sin or lie in your life. Make a list of three or four things you might do, and select one to commit to doing today. Then consider, is there a friend or family or community member you could invite into this activity with you? Perhaps your whole family can do something together and regularly that comes against the work of the enemy in your setting. What a powerful difference that could make!
Remember, this is just the beginning of changing the spiritual climate of where God has placed you and all of the relationships around you. It takes persistence and faith to continue these practices on a regular basis, exploring other areas of corporate sin where God may want you and your community to step in.
Deep intercession invariably leads to a time of brokenness before God. Obviously we donât stay in this posture â God rushes in to heal and forgive â but to ignore or hurry through this step means we arenât listening.
God must reveal both our personal and collective sin to us.
It is vital to identify not only personal sin but the sins of our cities and cultures in warfare prayer. This is not done in a state of detachment or judgment. This happens when we allow God to reveal our own brokenness and need for repentance within the context of our greater community. We must allow our hearts to be moved and even broken by the consequences of our collective sin.
We are not immune to the sins of the culture around us. We seek Godâs mercy and forgiveness for our own personal brokenness as well as for our neighborhoods, towns, and cities.
JUMP IN
Today we invite you to give 20 minutes to this exercise. Begin with five minutes in worship like you did on day two. Then remain in silence and ask God to bring to mind any personal or collective sin that he wants to make you aware of. You will not cover everything in one day, so trust that he will show you what he has for you today. It doesn't need to be exhaustive.
If it helps to have a pen, write down a few of the things that come to mind. Then allow yourself to listen to Godâs grief and anger over those sins. Spend time in repentance and receive his forgiveness.
âSanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.â - Joshua 3:5
Day four of the Seeds of a Prayer Movement series involved walking an area of your city or neighborhood and learning to see it with fresh eyes â with Godâs eyes. Scroll down to read the entire post and jump in to start seeing the area where God has placed you in a new way.
Our lives move quickly. There is a lot that happens around us that we tend to never notice or consider. Sometimes this is because there is a lot of "chatter" internally that distracts us. But as we start with worship, listen, and wait, that chatter begins to quiet down. This is the time to begin to really see the world around us.
Making simple observations from a prayerful posture can teach us a lot about how to pray for a place or people group.
JUMP IN
Today give 15 minutes to observing your context. Take a walk around your home, your neighborhood, the city center, or a specific place where you feel drawn. It's important here that you walk. When we walk, we slow down. We use all of our senses. We move at a pace that our minds can follow.
As you walk, notice:
The people - What are they doing, wearing, and saying? What is their general demeanor? Are they alone, with friends, or with family?
The places - Are they functional or social? Are the beautiful or run down? Are they crowded or empty?
The atmosphere - Does it feel warm and friendly, or cold and distant? Do you find yourself engaged or removed? Are people anxious or relaxed?
When youâve finished observing, return to the practice of listening. Tell God, I see this setting through my eyes, now show it to me through yours. What is really going on here? Continue to listen and wait for him to prompt or direct you.
Did you catch day three of our prayer movement series? To really pray in line with the heart of God for a place, we must first listen and wait â two things that are surprisingly difficult for us to do. Scroll down to read day three.
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
romaincrisis
germansingergirl
dededos
origamiaround