I cannot begin to describe how relieved I felt at waking up and feeling better today! It would’ve been a tragedy to miss any of this day! After 9ish we left the farm, heading off to the church called Grace which is where we are hosting this weekend’s worship gathering, Cageless Birds. There was a guy with us in the van this morning... he had flown in from Canada yesterday, and WALKED from the airport to where the band was practicing (usually a 30 min DRIVE!). When he got there, he asked if he could camp out in the church for the weekend, cause he had nowhere else else to stay! Talk about hard-core worshipper, ha ha! Jonathan and Melissa invited him back to the farm, and he’s made himself at home very quickly. We stopped to fill up with “gas” (still weird to call it that! I’m also still not used to driving on the wrong side of the road...), so I went in to the convenience store. It’s such an experience looking at racks of stuff and not really knowing what’s in the packages! Even when the name sounds familiar – you still don’t really know what you’re getting cause everything’s so different! We got to the church only a few minutes before the worship was scheduled to begin. I was SO excited, I didn’t really know what to do with myself! The time of worship was really beautiful, and it struck me again what an immense privilege it is to be here with these amazing people – invited into the “behind-the-scenes” of their lives. It’s so great to know that when they worship up there, it really IS out of overflow of what they do every day. There’s not a hint of performance in it, or striving to be anything they’re not. We’ve seen their day-to-day lives, and worship floes out all the time. Which means when worship begins in a setting like this, we know that it’s just a continuation of what they do anyway. We worship together in a little room here on the farm the same way that we worshipped there in a more public gathering.
Towards the end of the morning worship session, Jessie (one of our staff) came up with her bird Simeon in his cage. She told us all the story of how she first coaxed him out of that cage. When she first got him, he was terrified of her, and would try move away from her. So she spent lots of time just staying near his cage, letting him get used to her. Then she would put her hand in his cage, and he would back away. But eventually he got more and more used to her hand, until he would come up to it and sit on it. Then she would try to get him out of the cage. He didn’t want to get out of the cage – she had to grab him and remove him. She let him get used to flying around her room – she even hung up a branch for him to perch on. Now he flies around rooms happily – we’ve even had him flit about us during some of our times in the art room! But he had never been in a room the size of the church we were in. Jessie said that sometimes God has to coax us out of our cages the way she got Simeon out of his. He comes close to us, lets us get used to Him – until we’re ready to venture out. Because we were made to be free, we were made to fly. So she release Simeon into that room, and we were all a little nervous about what would happen! But off he went, and you could see that he was in his element! He blitzed around the room, over and over, to the cheers of people. And when he got tired, he came back to Jessie. She had been a little afraid that he’s perch up on a rafter, and we’d never get him down (!), but she had let him go anyway. Just like God lets us go – we’re free to leave our cages. We’re free to leave Him even. But He trusts that we will find our way back to him – and that the cage will become His protection of us – the place we can feel safe, but not the place that keeps us trapped. And you know what’s crazy (Jonathan pointed this out...)?! God makes our ribs HIS cage – He comes to live inside of us, to set us free! Wow.
We had our lunch (we had packed sandwiches for ourselves at breakfast), and then we heard Papa Ken speak on “God time”. He says he used to call it “quiet time” until he heard Jonathan praising from miles away during one of his times... and then he decided they are definitely not always quiet! Apparently Papa Ken has never finished his teaching on God time, and it’s easy to see why... he gets super excited about God and times with Him, and tells so many stories that he never gets through very many points! But every “rabbit trail” is full of God truth, and it’s so delightful to hear the rich wisdom that God has built into him over years of faithful walking with Him. I love hearing him speak! Some highlights:
· Anything you do that doesn’t come out of a heart of worship is done in the flesh.
· Anything you use to escape your situation is the beginning of an addiction. Jesus is the only thing we should be using to “escape”.
· God time is a CHOICE. We are what we choose – we get to choose what our deepest passions will be.
· The key to enjoying God is understanding how much He enjoys you!
· We don’t have to have all the answers. We don’t have to make things immediately right with a scripture and a pat! Let Jesus make it alright :o)
· God is the original initiator of love – He has always been pursuing us. God wants to talk to me even more than I want to listen to Him. God loves it when we crawl into His lap, and let him read us the story of His heart.
· Love makes you spend more than you’ve got.
After he had finished sharing, myself, Katharina (a German student now based in Norway) and Katherin (Swiss-German) were chatting to Papa Ken’s grandson (Jonathan & Melissa’s nephew), when Papa Ken came over and invited us to coffee at Starbucks. You don’t pass up an opportunity like that! It was such a special time – hearing his stories, asking him questions, getting to connect a bit better with him. I am so grateful to have had that opportunity! It still astounds me that he prays for all of us 18Inchers every day, and that he has so much love for all of us! When we got back, we hung out at the church a bit, played some more scumbags and warlords, and got some pizza for supper. One of my highlights of the day was gathering together with everyone to pray before the evening worship service. I would’ve loved to have heard what it sounded like from outside that room – all those crazy prayers and beautiful songs. My expectancy level went through the roof, and I’m sure it would’ve been the same for anyone who heard that sound!
Worship that evening was one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced. My prayer was that God would show me what it means to be truly cage-less – to not be held back by fear and insecurities in worship. So much of the evening was just allowing God’s song of love to wash over me! Also His song of freedom and liberation! After worshipping for a while (singing and shouting and dancing my heart out!) Anna (who had come with Adam Cox for the week) came over and asked if she could pray for me. The band had just started on a new song, but they hadn’t sung any of the words to it yet – there was just this crazy rhythm going on, and huge amounts of expectancy in the air. Before the first word was sung, Anna said to me, “I feel like this song is for you” (she doesn’t know the song, what it’s about). Turns out it’s one of Melissa’s songs... I don’t know if I can remember all the words, but I’ll try give you the gist(or some of the lines/ideas that stuck out). “On the shores of my soul I give you permission to wash my fears away... I’m gonna sing out loud, and let my voice be heard! It’s the song of victory and it’s ringing in the earth...”0God started doing some crazy stuff – I could literally feel stuff being shaken out of me. I’m guessing it was a lot of those fears and insecurities being rooted out. Pretty soon after that, there was a moment where there were some awesome rhythms going on, and a whole lot of 18Inchers were up on stage bashing on drums or dancing. I headed up there with only the words “Nkululeko” in my head – FREEDOM! I asked Mel if I could sing it... so there I was, a white South African, singing in Zulu in the middle of an American worship gathering! Ha ha! Was great fun. Got them all dancing too! Soon after that Molly started singing a song of hers which I think might honestly be the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard! The chorus says “nobody ever loved me like this before”. I lay on the ground LAUGHING and drinking in God’s goodness! Papa Ken was laughing with me, and then he came over and grabbed me and started whirling me around in a kind of waltz. It was like God was dancing with me – it was such a sweet moment. Later on, when I was worshipping by myself again, I could still catch whiffs of his cologne on me... and suddenly it dawned on me: when we spend time with Jesus, when we dance with the Father – all through the day we’ll catch whiffs of his scent on us. And we’ll remember the dance, we’ll remember how much He loves us. We will be defined by that alone.
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| Setting up |
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| Papa Ken time |
I’m not sure exactly when it was, but at some point during the evening, we also all got up on the stage (as a school) to be the choir for the chorus of a song written by Jake (one of our staff). It starts with this beautiful, spacious, Sigur-Ros-ish bit, with Jake singing an amazing falsetto melody. Then we all came crashing in with the chorus: “Salvation is on its way, Salvation is born this day! Slaves you’ll be, slaves you’ll be, slaves you’ll be, slaves you’ll be no more!” at the end we went into one of our spontaneous worship moments, singing freedom over the Cageless Birds around us! I LOVE this family!
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