Steering 090

On Monday night during a time of prayer and ministry, my friend shared with me another vision he had seen. As he had prayed for me earlier in the day, The Lord had shown him a picture of me standing on the roof of the church, behind the old wooden flagpole. I was facing East, and in my hands was a huge old wooden helm (Steering wheel on a ship) like the kind the old time sailing vessels had. The flagpole was like a mast, and I was steering the vessel (church building) in an Easterly direction. There was a strong wind in my face, and my facial expression was that of peace. When he shared this with me, he had another vision as well. He saw a compass binnacle (The large wood and brass structure that contains the magnetic compass on the more old fashioned type ships) The compass card was spinning around and around, but was slowing down and starting to settle on a course. He saw the card was reading a South Westerly direction, but had not yet settled and was still coming around slowly. I am still praying as to what these may represent. I know that a compass card should never spin, it should always point to the Magnetic North Pole. In fact it is the ship itself, that spins around the compass card, as the ship navigates, drifts or otherwise changes her heading. This is of course assuming that one of the Captain's children is not sitting there next to the binnacle playing with magnets (I wonder if any ships have ever been wrecked because of this...).

Becalmed...

"I see a very large sailing ship, like a three or four master... one that looks like it would carry a lot of people, but it has been becalmed..."The term becalmed is used regarding a sailing vessel when the wind dies away and she can no longer be carried along by her sails. My friend went on to say " But in the distance, I see clouds... Not too far off, a strong wind is coming. Not a storm, but a strong wind..." I knew in my heart the sailing ship represented me, and the coming wind represented the move of the Holy Spirit. My friends were praying for me, about the weight that I have been feeling regarding my debt, my low income, and just the restlessness I have had in my heart about so many areas of my life. I have been praying for direction, clarity, wisdom etc. regarding my desire to be out of debt, to have a family, and to be doing work that I love doing. Again God gave him a picture, and he said: "I see you standing in the chart room, you are pulling out various instruments and charts, but you are not sure which to use or which are the right ones for where you are at..." I was pretty floored. I don't think Vance knew that there was no job I could think of I would rather do than be the navigation officer on a ministry ship... But there was more to it than that, as this picture reflected where I am at right now in my life. I may not currently be on a literal ship, but the picture is one God knows I can see. I'm really not at the helm, steering the vessel where to go, nor am I in the engine room or hoisting sails to make it move. I am in the chart room. I have pulled many charts out, trying to decide where to go. What to do with this life God has given me. The opportunities are endless, as the world is round. But I am seeking God as to where He wants this ship to sail. Maybe I will get to be the navigation officer, But I want Him to be the captain. He can decide where this wild ride will go, and He can deal with the paperwork and the port authorities when we get there. I'll just do what He tells me to do and plot out the best course I can with the information, charts and instruments He gives me. There is a lot of freedom in not having to be the boss. Come Holy Spirit!!!

I still wish I was a pirate...

I'm tired. I'm still way in debt, and things keep piling up. The boys in blue keep mailing me photos of my car and thinking I should somehow pay them for this wonderful service. I just think that's so nice of them. (grin) Those are $167 a pop, but $50 more if paid late. Oh joy. And I have this old deisel car I bought as a project to convert to run on veggie oil, which I still want to do, but it broke down in Oct. I went out and got a new car and never had money to fix the old one so it sat on the street. To be on the street it needed insurance, so that has been paid. But not wanting to keep insuring it, I wanted to get it fixed so I could get it to someones place to park it for the winter. But not able to get it running, I didn't want to pay extra to get it towed to someones house and then later have it towed again to get it out. That seemed silly and expensive. So I had it towed to a shop finally a couple weeks ago. The guy tried hard but the cars needs were over his head so I again had it towed elsewhere. It is now sitting in a shop outside town (after a $70 tow bill) and they say it has absolutely no compression. That's bad for any engine, but especially a deisel, which runs on compression rather than spark like a gas engine does. Probably a split piston, they said though it could be completely blown rings or severly gouged cylinder liners. Either way, there is no option but to remove the head, and further inspect the engine. This will be at least $300 -$400, though there's little chance I will get away with any less than a totally rebuilt engine, which, short of a miracle, will cost far more. Oh joy, more bills. Not that I have much choice, really, the car is a classic Mercedes Benz in great cond (body anyways) which I got for next to nothing on ebay last summer. I think it's worth $8,000-$10,000 perhaps if It was running well (which it did before) but with a completely toasted engine that won't start, it's worth next to nothing. Maybe scrap value plus a bit. So I have to fix it. How I'll pay for it I really have no idea, as my credit is maxed and paycheques seem to always get gobbled up by the trolls that live in my bank account. I wish that was a joke. Anyways, yes, I accept the fact that I am way in debt. I am fully aware of that, but I keep asking "Is this how it is supposed to be? Are we not supposed to be in the world, yet not of the world?". Then why is the world choking me to death? I accept responsibility, because yes, I drove the car too fast and got the tickets. Yes, I bought the old car, and I know old cars can break down. But every time I try to get ahead, 4 things seem to jump out at me dragging me further behind. I don't want to live life like this. I don't want to be in debt. I buy things because I either need them, think I need them, or just want them. The want things are mostly just food, coffee and the occasional movie or something. The old car I bought so I could convert it to veggie oil, and have a really cool car that costs next to nothing to run. The new car I bought because the old one broke down and I need a reliable car for work. Actually I had bought an old toyota for $300 and fixed a few things on it including some windows, but before I could get it safetied to drive it some lovely neighborly* individual (*not the term I used at the time, that term cannot be repeated without my needing to repent) decided I obviously needed a bigger project to work on and proceeded to help me by smashing nearly every window out of the car, and even opening the door to smash the inside of the door panel off, all with a few giant grantite blocks of rubble. To say I wanted to hurt the individual would be an understatement. Anyways at that point, I fugured stuff this... Stuff this car, stuff this city, stuff everything, I no longer cared about debt or whatever and went out and bought a 2006 car with an alarm. I would have preffered a car with explosive countermeasures, but apparently they don't make them that way. So I settled for a Hyundai. Good car though. Now I question the wisdom of that, but it's going to be sort of hard to undo now. So now I have two cars (I gave the Toyota to a friend's school which has an automotive program) And I've been wanting to get a house because I am really way past being sick of the insanity of living in a church with a bunch of other people and no way to escape everything here, but the bank doesn't want to give me a mortgage when I'm so in debt with the car loan and my credit being maxed. So I find myself with my life so full of junk, mostly junk I don't even want, it has just been deemed necesary to carry on my life here, that I really don't know what to do anymore. I don't want to live like this. I hate living like this. I really don't want a house, or cars, or a job. I want to run away... I want to live on a sailboat with my wife and kids, and just spend three or four years cruising around the South Pacific, basking in the sun, swimming, fishing. But I don't have a sailboat, a wife or kids. Aaarrrggghhh!!!! I still wish I was a pirate. Jacob

Beauty from the Ashes

It's so easy to get so caught up in doing good works that you miss out on the bigger picture. I am the type of person who has spent so much of my life trying to help other people to have a better life that I hardly know what else to do. As a christian, I believe we are called to be a light in a progressively darker world. If I see someone in need, and I know I can help, I have always believed that generally, we need to do that. I have tried to live a life that reflects these values, and I believe for the most part I have been successful. What is success? In this context, I have generally thought that it would be to die to yourself, to your own desires, your own wants etc. But I have come to realize that is only the half of it. I have been a christian for longer than I could really say. I've been to more church services, been on more mission trips, given more financially, listened to more worship cd's, volunteered in more capacities in more ministries than anyone even myself could ever calculate. Heck, I even live in a church, and have for over three years. I'm not bragging, though, just making a point. I'm the sort of person who has really genuinely tried in many ways to give all I have to God and to his kingdom. I have tried to make my life a living sacrifice that would please God and help others to know Him. People have phoned me more times than I could ever count asking me to help them with this or that, give them a ride here or there, help them get out of this or that dangerous situation and I in general have almost always said yes. Sometimes when my phone rings I cringe and almost want to cry. In my head I'm like "NO! GOD HELP ME!" and then I answer the phone, "Hello? ...ummm, sure, okay...I'll be right over." I have counted this as making my life a living sacrafice to God and to His church. Which, well, it is. I have given money I don't have so many times that I'm now way in debt, And I do mean way. But I justify it by saying, "Well, I'm giving to God... He will help me to afford it." And I do believe He will, has and is. Saying all this though, What I'm getting at is that I do the stuff, but I've become so busy doing the stuff, that I no longer have time for God. So busy trying to be the church, that I've forgotten that the church, first and foremost is supposed to be the bride of Christ. We are called into a love relationship with God absolutely first and foremost, and everything else, no matter how important, is supposed to be a distant second. I have not lived that out well in a long long time. I have always gotten so much of my strength with which to live and operate, my passion for life and living and my hope excitement and energy from intimate time with God. From being in the word, from being in worship. But for so long now I have so deeply surrounded myself with the needs of others, that I no longer took time to read the word. I became so busy helping people even during our church services that I never got into worship. The needs of people around me became so heavy and I so desperatly wanted to help them. But As I immersed myself more and more into that, I found less and less that I was close to God anymore. As I have seen, often first hand, such horrible things happening around me, I carried that. As people shared stories with me of painfull situations they have been through, I carried that pain. As people have told me about being raped, being forced into things unimaginable to most of us, I carried that too. And My anger grew. And grew. I heard of kids I know having their innocence stolen from them, and I became even more angry. I so many times have asked God, How can you have allowed this to happen? I became angry at God. Very angry. Unable to reconcile the God I knew from the bible being so far from where I expected and wanted Him to be. I began to feel that God was not so much this awesome, loving father that I preached about, but rather a distant landlord. Sure He was out there somewhere, but where? Sure, the Bible says He loves us, but I thought I knew what love is, and God seemed to be so far from my ideals of a real loving Father that I came to decide that although I know on paper He does love us, His love is different than mine and I somehow had it better than He did. I was left in this cold miserable city of pain cleaning up His mess, trying to help His children, while He was off somewhere in some prosperity church being praised. Probably somewhere nicer and warmer than here, too. Yeah some God you turned out to be... That was what my faith became. I was out doing all the stuff, taking care of His kids, Trying until it took almost everything from me that I had, to help people... to save them. That was it, I wanted to save them. Jesus obviously couldn't, or worse, wouldn't, so I would. Angry, bitter, tired, in financial ruin, and now with a saviour complex thinking I could save them. What a life. But praise God for His grace, He still loved me. I could no longer say I still loved Him, though I really did want to, but He did love me. And He spoke... He showed me that I had lost my first love. I never took time to seek Him, to worship, and in reality I didn't want to anymore. I wanted to want to, but I didn't want to. I remember taking up my guitar trying to play some worship song, and only getting a few chords out. I couldn't worship someone I didn't even like. I just felt sick. In frustration, I put back the guitar and went off to do something else. I had lost all my love for Him. I still knew He was there, and I knew that without Him we were all stuffed, but what could I do? Out of all this suffering, God spoke to me and showed me that I needed to seek him. I needed to return to my first love. Sure I was doing great things, or trying anyways, but that wasn't what was foremost on his mind... He wanted me. I was supposed to be the bride of Christ, not a burned out social worker. I was called to be a worshipper, not someone who just got angry when he picked up a guitar. I was called to be in His Presence, in His throneroom... not the desert. But the desert was where I had resided for far too long. So now where am I? Well I'm working on it, but this time by His strength, and in listening for His voice. I connected with some friends here in Winnipeg who have started a prayer movement called the Sanctuary House of Prayer (I've known for over a year I was supposed to be there, but, well, I was too busy...) So now I am trying to reprioritise things, to be putting God first in everything. I'm trying to be in the word more but I still have a long way to go. I want to be a worshipper. And I know He's calling me to be. I so want to be in love with God again. But I have to let Him be God, and I have to let Him carry peoples pain, because I just can't. Maybe a bit and for a time but at the end of the day I just can't. I was at a conference in the states a couple weeks ago, and I just really felt God asking me to let go. I cried. I was so broken because of my love for those who have been so close to me, and my fear, my very real fear that they won't follow God, and that He won't protect them. But I'm not God. He doesn't do things my way. I have to accept that. We each have free will, for better or for worse, and I have to accept that, too. And I have to learn to trust Him, that He really does love those that He has given me to be a sheperd over, and that He will be faithfull to look over them and protect them, whatever that entails. I have to trust that He knows what is best. And I have to remember too, that He does feel the pain of rejection every time one of His kids whom He loves turns away. And that it does grieve Him deeply to see them hurt, every time any of them are hurt in any way. And as I stood their and cried, I think for the first time I began to feel some of that pain the way He feels it. Yes, He told me I wasn't Jesus, and I couldn't save people. I can help them, sometimes, but I'm not Jesus. I would die for them in an instant if I could, but well, He already did, and my death wouldn't buy much. Not now anyways. Jacob

I wish I was a pirate...

Meanderings of the mind... Yesterday I wrote an email to one of my very best friends. This post is based what I said in part of my email... I have been very torn lately. Such a big part of me wants to just not be here most of the time. There's so many things I'm longing for, a family being I suppose one of the biggest. There's a girl I know here who I know I really like, and I think she's on the same page but I just... I guess I'm afraid. There's so many questions I keep asking. I know I'm afraid. Hurt enough that I just don't want to go there, but then there she is again... Arrrggghhh!!! I wonder to myself, do I think I'm falling in love? I don't know. What even is love? Do I even want it? For a long time I've been trying to convince myself that that's there's no such thing... That it's just a crutch for lonely fools who can't face life on their own. In a lot of ways I'd like to believe this. It seems so much easier. I guess because every time I've ever thought I loved someone (like in a romantic way) It's ended up in me being crushed. I will not deny that in many ways it has been my fault. I have certainly foolishly stumbled into things that I should have had more wisdom about. But really... And I do mean this... much of the pain I have ever faced has come from the idea of me thinking I was in love with someone, and again and again having the whole thing pulled out from under me. I have so many times declared to myself and to God "I hate love!!!" Sad, and foolish. I sound like Grumpy Smurf. For a long period now I really haven't let myself too close to the idea of really being in love. Sure I've pondered it, I've tossed it up and thrown it down. I've considered it. I've recognised that I do believe I could be single and happy all my life. But is this the best? Is this God's will for me? It seems and feels like accepting defeat. If it is defeat, I want nothing to do with it. "But God, where are YOU in all this? What is your will?" He seems to be saying "just wait..." Alas, I don't know... I wish I was a pirate... Jacob

Getting Back- 10 years later

How do you get back to somewhere you've once been when all is now changed and that place no longer exists but in memories and hearts? I keep coming back to that question... When I was 20 I went out to spend some time volunteering on a little medical ship called the M/V Island Mercy. It was August 1997, and she was tied up in Newcastle, Australia, awaiting crew, cargo and whatever else was needed to head up into the Islands of Vanuatu (Formerly the New Hebrides) on outreach. There were at that time a little over 30 of us on board, though that number would swell as our sailing date approached. I felt God was calling me to be there and I guess I thought it would be an adventure but I don't think I ever anticipated how much that little ship and all we did with her would change my life. I'm 30 now, and I cant believe it's almost 10 years since that period of my life began. I now live about as far from the ocean as you can get, but when I stop, sit down and allow my mind to wander just a bit, I'm back in those islands, on that little ship, worrying about nothing more serious than terminating some rust, wondering if the engineers will ever fix the sink in my cabin, and weather I can afford one of those beautifull glass bottles of Coke they still sold in Honiara at that time. I miss that life. So often I'm back there, dreaming. I can still hear the voices of the islanders, singing accapela or with homemade drums, the roar of the surf, the hum of the old diesels, the heat in the engine room, the heat in my cabin, actually the heat everywhere. You couldn't escape the heat. I used to go stand in the walk in freezer in the galley sometimes to cool off, but the head cook, Jason Sanderson, wasn't too fond of me doing that if I remember. I guess that's why i'd like the coke so much, I could put it in the freezer for a half an hour or so and it would just start to get frosty inside, then you'd go out on deck in the hot tropical Solomon Islands sun, and there was nothing in the world nicer than that frosty bottle of Coca Cola in your hand. I don't know what it is that I miss the most about that life... weather it's the simplicity of everything, the adventure, the community we had on board (though sometimes we were at each other's throats, too.) I guess I'm just in love with that life... the life I once had. Now, you know, I'm working. Car payments, Visa bills, phone bills, trying to get a mortgage... you know. Trying to get a life in the world the way everyone else does. I like my job, for the most part. I drive a bus. I like driving. But I know I've been ruined for the ordinary. There's not a day it escapes me. It's -32c today, -42c with the windchill. yesterday was -48c. For Americans, I think that's about -60F. Cold however you look at it. Too cold. But despite my complaining I'm getting used to it and I guess I don't mind it. But in my mind I'm still in those Islands. I can't go back. I've tried. That place, it does not exist anymore. The ship is still around, as far as I know anyways. It was sold in 2001 and replaced with a little 102' motor yacht. I think she is now a training vessel in the Philipines. That was last I heard anyways. The new ship that replaced her is the Pacific Link, a great little ship. I spent most of a year on her when they got her, but she's not the same. The people that were part of our crew are now all over the world, from Scotland to New Zealand to Canada to wherever else. Some married, some with kids, some working. A few still in ministry with Marine Reach, though not many so far as I know. Even if they still had the ship, things would be so different now. People change. The world has changed. I've changed. I'm older. Maybe even wiser. I even found a few grey hairs on my head the other day. That made me laugh. But yeah. I've slowly come to accept it. That place that I love so much, It is gone. Not completely, though, because it is a part of me. It is a part of who I am and what I do. God Bless Jacob