Tag: hope

Why and What For

Our family moving is news because…it means our two-year limbo period is over. Hooray!

Our family moving is news because…because we’re so excited about what we’re moving FOR and towards. That’s been awhile for us. We left China only knowing God was finished with us there. We left lots of places in 2016, always moving on but never seeing around the next bend. This time, we know what’s ahead. We’re not leaving upstate NY ‘cause we hate it or because I just couldn’t stand my friend Verlyn any more; we’ve been called to Atlanta. We will be working among refugees in the most ethnically diverse square mile in the United States. We’ll be a part of Envision Atlanta (itself a part of the CMA, the organization we’ve always belonged to) which is already meaningfully meeting the personal, educational, economic, occupational, spiritual, etc. needs of these families who find themselves far from home. Perhaps we know a little bit about what that’s like.

Our family moving is news because…God used the closing of our culture center and coffee shop in 2012 to move us from Xi’an so he could move us to Xining where he would give us Everett so he could move us back to the U.S. so he could move us to Oswego Alliance Church which had connections to Envision Atlanta so he could connect us to the EA site coordinator on his visit north so we could go visit south and see EA and know: this is the place He has been preparing us for for years. Wow. Wow! [At least that’s how things appear from our little human vantage point.]

Our family moving is news because…it won’t happen without YOU.

1. We will not be able to thrive in this new ministry without a team of committed prayer partners. And we have no desire to merely survive; we want to thrive. His Kingdom come. His will be done.

2. But we will not even survive without an invested team of financial partners. Or be allowed to start, for that matter. It’s already April and we’ve got to raise 50% of the cash and 80% of the commitment towards some pretty big numbers.* And soon after that reach 100%. It feels crazy, it really does. But we’re moving once school’s out, regardless. We did not choose this path. We are not driving this…what are we on? A ship? A train? An avalanche? A story. God Almighty is the only real Author around here. And what is the lesson he has hammered home the past two years? “YOU CAN TRUST ME. I can take care of your family.”

 I am not being facetious when I tell you I did not have the faith for a decision like this when we came home two years ago. Possibly not even close. Not for a family this big. Not for a ministry inside the US. Not for numbers this big. But I mentioned that we’re not driving?

“So what if the money doesn’t come in?”

Sorry, we’ve already leapt. What, I couldn’t get a job at Ace Hardware in Atlanta if things got as harrowing as 2016 again? We couldn’t live below the poverty line in Atlanta as well as we have in Oswego? We could. 

I just don’t happen to think that’s what He is doing this time. Not again. 

But time will tell. I have no guarantees, and have been wrong before. At this point, the final outcome is more in your hands than it is in mine.

Most of all, this is news because…it feels like dawn after a long, long night. It feels like Aslan on the move again. And when does that ever fail to send chills up your spine?

Envision Atlanta has a vision to start a movement that will see 1000 churches planted by the year 2027. Getting there will take creativity and work, and already in the works are after school programs, kids’ clubs/camps, English classes, job training,  and small businesses, with plenty of wild ideas to come. We’ll share about our roles soon, but it’s going to be a great fit for both of us. 

The snow is melting, and the Kingdom (as well as the Johnson family) is on the move. And we couldn’t be happier about it (please, Lord, make it the last move for a long, long time). One advantage to having lived in so many places is how many people we know. One seeming disadvantage might be that most of our friends made in the last decade and a half are living off of raised support themselves! But we are not afraid. Our God is big. And, hey! What about that crazy “HH for WK” campaign? A whole bunch of you know exactly what I’m talking about ‘cause you just knocked our socks off with it! But this time…far less than something like a couple of people pledging ten grand a month…we need an entire army who will pray and pledge…a few dollars a month.

Be one of them? 

 

P.S. Details coming! If you already know you want to join the financial side—and people do PRAY where they PAY—save us a step! (We’re really at a loss to understand where in the world we’re supposed to fit in all these phone call contacts that our fundraising coaches talk about…) Send a private message telling us of your monthly (or one-time) commitment, and we can at least start filling in blanks. An online giving option will be available WITHIN DAYS.

 

 

*We’re still waiting on those final numbers, actually. There’s a living allowance and then housing, health insurance, retirement, funds for ministry, travel, etc. These healthy and good numbers are decided for us by wise and experienced leaders (and our official employer is the South Atlantic District of the CMA). 

My Dad’s Funeral

On Saturday we buried my father. The funeral service itself was quite beautiful. Lots of people and lots of tears both Saturday and Friday at the viewing. Something that stuck out to me was how many people had felt that my dad “especially liked” them. At the funeral I delivered the pastoral message and what follows is my unchanged––and punctuated/formatted for speaking not writing––text.

 

Saturday, April 7, 2018

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”

Everything within us resists Death.

“If only…”

…Martha moans. Full of regret. Her brother Lazarus gone.

Two paragraphs later, her sister Mary    same thing 

“If only you had been here…”

We don’t like our loved ones suddenly ripped from us.

If only…I could have had more time…    one more chance to…

I myself have tickets two weeks from now (Chicago/NY). 

My calendar that day reads:   “Breakfast with Dad”

Me, my dad, my 17 yo. 

It was to have been the first stop on my son’s “becoming a man” trip

The oldest son’s oldest son’s oldest son getting some manhood advice

My dad talking man-to-man to my son

Now that breakfast will never take place. 

And I don’t like that.   !! It’s nearly first thing Mom said @midnight:02 night of Dad’s death. “Oh, Dann…I’m at hospital…he’s not going to be able to do breakfast with you.”

And she wept.

Like we are weeping today.

None of us will sit down to another meal with Larry Johnson. 

No more Sammy’s Pizza. 

No more plastic gold bowls with 4 breakfast cereals poured to precision in both quantity and order. 

No more piping hot…anything. 

These are the kings of things that make us so desperately SAD today. [We’re going to miss him!]

However. However.

We will eat together again. We will sit down to eat together at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And that’s what makes us so desperately HOPEFUL today. 

This isn’t the end!

Though I cannot prove that to you if you doubt it. 

In fact, God himself made His world in such a way that we will forever fall short of even being able to prove he exists! 

Not until He comes again on the clouds. 

********Because what God ultimately wants is love freely given.********

We love Because He first loved us.

[Sing??“Oh, how I love Jesus, because…”]

And ONLY God’s love can explain how Larry Robert Johnson should have loved so many of you. 

A year or so ago    visiting our house and     guys hanging drywall

Apart from the love of God, I cannot explain why one of these kids, who failed to graduate, had no vehicle or driver’s license, supporting a girlfriend and a son but no stable housing, should say to me: 

“I like your dad. I don’t know, he’s cool. I really like him.” 

It’s not because my dad was actually “cool.” Far from it. Right? He didn’t know the first thing about cool. Or anything about anything that this kid would have cared about in his life. 

But he LOVED!

He was honestly interested. 

Talked with this guy. Gave him a Bible. Told him about Jesus being the Way. Jesus being Truth. Jesus being Life. Quoted lots of other Scriptures while they talked. 

My dad saw this  young man’s potential because he saw him for what he truly was: 

a one-of-a-kind human being created with glory and for glory. 

[All I can recall saying was, “Dad, these guys aren’t doing any work while they’re talking with you… Can you dial it back a bit?]

He said to me: “That boy is close. He’s ready. He’s not far from the Kingdom.” 

And that’s how my dad saw the world. 

A lot of you experienced that, too. It might have even been a fairly random encounter with a quirky, corny, pretty particular old man, but somehow you knew he liked you. Acted like he loved you. 

Cause he did.     Cause God does.

The day after my dad died, I talked to grandson Christopher on the phone. “I’m so sorry, Christopher; you’ve lost your grandpa.” 

Do you know his immediate response? “Yeah, he really loved me.” 

Such a deep, deep longing that we ALL share: to be unconditionally loved. 

And when we find it. When we know it! It FREES us to also love.

Nothing looks more Christlike on us than when we love.

Though love is a always a risk. It always hurts. There will be loss. 

We’ve lost him. Our time with my dad is finished. 

Today, we honor him, and his life. We celebrate the great guy that he was. 

But NOW he meets JESUS face to face! 

He’s with his Maker! No more tears for him!

[In fact, I can already picture my dad’s smile on the day that I join him up there. (Though for some reason I’m having trouble imagining away that missing tooth he had there at the end…)]

This is the HOPE we have.

Hope for the next life is the only thing that makes sense of this one. 

Christ in this life is the only thing that can make sense of Death when it comes. 

And we see Death for what it really is: 

Just a door. From “reality” into REALITY.

From I Corinthians: 

“Death has been swallowed up in victory! Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting? 

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. BUT thanks be to God! He GIVES US the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

We celebrate Larry. 

Trust  Christ.

God be with you.

A Year Like None Other

(finally) Two reflective encapsulations of 2017:

 

reflective encapsulation #1

My life (in very real, concrete, unforced fashion) fulfilled these words of Jesus more than I ever imagined happening to me:

From Luke 14 (NASB)

26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”

From Matthew 10 (NLT)

37 “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.”

Burned in my mind are pictures throughout 2017 of my wife, two sons, and three daughters, each in their own age-appropriate way, raging in broken tears over the wreckage brought to seven lives in the pursuit of saving one.

My own most recent breakdown was last Sunday. I lay on the dining room floor crying over how much I’ve missed in Enoch’s life. He graduates this year!

Jesus? HOW do you love Everett (or me, for that matter) ALL the time? I don’t understand…

I never intended for my family to be sacrificed this much on the altar of responding to the Kingdom’s call.

Yet I would accept it again. Because this seismic change, though completely God’s idea, was not brought about at the point of a gun. We have a love relationship; He knew he didn’t have to. 

Of course, I would rather have been spared this cup, this way. But our rock is this: out of Wreck, we know, comes Redemption of many kinds. And God is writing a story bigger than the part we can see right now.

And great news is coming (verse 39):

“If you give up your life for me, you will find it.”

It’s in the low times that all I see is that awful future tense.

Kyrie eleison.

 

reflective encapsulation #2

His eye is on the sparrow, and I KNOW he watches me. 

I opened 2017 unemployed and found work at a hardware store three months in. So, for nine months last year I worked full time at $15/hr and brought home $20,000. Anyone knows that a family of eight (even without three ravenous teens) cannot live in city America on $20,000 per annum.

Yet here we are. And that’s without food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, or State help of any kind (not that we wouldn’t, we just haven’t) except free lunches at the kids’ schools.

So exactly how much gift money did we get? I ran a report to see.

Oddness of all oddnesses, “Gift Money for 2017” also totaled exactly $20,000.

From dozens of people. Some extremely unexpected. Money just kept showing up, and basically (other than that little summer GoFundMe) without us doing any asking.

Amazing.

However, even $40,000 isn’t quite a livable salary for a family of our size, and we had to eliminate all optionals and many other expenses that you (and usually we) would consider budget essentials. Instead, we were buoyed by grocery store gift cards, scholarships for the girls’ dance, gifted city-league soccer, free babysitting, free gas, free turkeys, many treats to cups of coffee, discounted work on our roof, discounted work on the house painting, free machines, free work on machines, money for airplane tickets, my motorcycle!, free bags of clothes, Christmas gifts from church and school, on and on. It was still never enough, yet somehow there was enough.

I’ve never been through anything like it. It would be fine with me if it never happened again.

But whatever the future may hold, 2017 will forever be The Year of the Lord’s Provision.