Posted: 09/07/2009 at 3:45pm | IP Logged

Wayne Jacobsen - The more relationship you experience with the Father, the more righteous you become.

The Shack Collaborator's Pharasectomy: from Law to Grace

by Steve and Sheryl Eastman, OpenHeaven.com TOP News

RALEIGH, NC - Although William Paul Young wrote the original manuscript of The Shack, the final product was a team effort.  Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings helped Young shape the book through a 16-month process of editing and rewriting.  Their collaboration was on The New York Times bestseller list for fifty-two weeks, fifty of which were consecutive. 

Jacobsen is also co-author of So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore.  Like the main character Jake Colson (a pseudonym combining his name with co-author Dave Coleman’s), Jacobsen has transitioned from a performance-based religion to a fruitful life energized by God’s love.  It all comes down to his view of the cross where Jesus gave his life to conquer man’s sin, a benefit available to all who embrace a relationship with Him.  For him, even God’s wrath is motivated by His love.

We caught up with Wayne Jacobsen in Raleigh, where several house churches, that did not originally know each other, invited him.  Well over 150 attended what he prefers to call “conversations,” not meetings. – Steve Eastman

I’ve read two of the most profound and life-changing books in the past few months.  The first was “The Shack.”  Wayne Jacobsen was a collaborator.  The second was “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore,” co-authored by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman.  The thing I learned from reading these books was not a new concept; the whole theme of both books is God’s tremendous love for us.  The thing that changed my life with the first book is learning just how far God will go, what lengths He will use to convince us of His love.  And the thing that impacted my life so dramatically with the second book was the freedom we have in His love.  We no longer have to be bound by obligation or people’s expectations of us.  God is NOT mad at us if we do not do the things people expect of us as Christians - - - even going to “church.”

Then Wayne Jacobsen came to town.  He spent three days in the Raleigh area sharing his journey into spiritual freedom.  What I gleaned from listening to Wayne is that we need to throw out the mindset that we are obligated to “do.”  We don’t have to perform to earn God’s favor or love.  He simply loves us, no matter what we do or don’t do.  “Religion” has told us (and is still telling people) that if God is not coming through for you – if He is not answering your prayers – you obviously are not “doing” enough.  It’s your fault.

But Wayne’s theme is setting people free from that way of thinking.  He tells us that God has set us free from “the rules” that we believe are expected of us.  That's what the New Covenant says.

He spoke using many examples of how this was practically displayed.  He told us why “religion” does not work.  He told us human effort does not gain God’s approval.  Then he showed us what “church” really should be and was in the New Testament.

I have learned so many things in the last few days.  And my heart resonates these words, “This is truth.  This is freedom.”  And all I can say is, I want more.  I want this kind of freedom. – Sheryl Eastman

Sheryl:  I have been dying to know ever since I read it -- The Shack -- is it completely fictional? 

Wayne:  Yes.

Sheryl:  Yes?  Now I am surprised.  I really am.  It is so, so real and so much of it ties together at the end; I didn’t think it could possibly be entirely fiction. 

Wayne:  People have had a hard time dealing with that.  We’ve had FBI people who have actually done some research on the “lady killer” and surprised they’re not finding anything.  So they’re going, “Is this not true?”  And we’re going, “No.  None of it is true.  It was all a fictional story.”  It is all a metaphor for other things going on in life. 

And for Paul (William Paul Young), I think one psychologist asked him a question, if he ever had one of his children killed.  And he said, “No.”  Then she said, “Then something was murdered in you at a young age.” 

The book really resonates with people who are in need.  It seems real because of the way it’s written.  But no, it’s fiction start to finish.

Sheryl:  He was the originator of the story.  What part did you and Brad have in it? 

Wayne:  Well, we rewrote it, four different writes over sixteen months.  The three of us rewrote it together.  So Paul was also involved in the rewrites.  We actually just took it all apart and re-put it together. 

Originally in the book, Mack gets to the shack and Papa’s there and spring’s there and he just has these theological discussions with Mack.  And that’s kind of what Paul wanted to set up, just a theological conversation.  So Mack gets there and his first questions is, “The Trinity.  I don’t understand it.  Can you explain it to me?”  And God explains the Trinity.  It was just a series of things. 

What we wanted to do was to take the drama of the Missy story, which was around it all, and drive it through the conversation.  Everything in The Shack and in the discussions with Papa had to deal with Mack’s pain, Mack’s loss and Mack’s healing.  Originally it was just a series of theological discussions.  And we changed it into a story of someone’s healing.

Sheryl:  I can see that.  I don’t know anything about Brad, and I have not read his works separate from what you collaborated with, but after reading So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, I saw your writing in there, your style, making the story very much.  I so appreciated that.  That’s my style.  That’s the style I can read and relate to. 

To give you a real quick example, and then I’ll let you answer, my husband and I have been talking all weekend about, what’s it called, he put a name to it. 

Steve:  Substitutionary atonement versus penal substitution.

Sheryl:  Okay.  We’ve been talking about this, terms like this.  I don’t care what it’s labeled, but the thing that he could understand was the straight facts.  The way I got it was when you told me the story about your wife attacking the swarm of bees.  I got that.

Wayne’s wife, Sara, is highly allergic to bees.  However, when the family was out on a picnic one time, their son got into a swarm of bees and was being attacked by them.  Sara jumped up and ran over to him.  Wayne called after her to stop, saying he would take care of it.  But she didn’t even hear what he was saying.  Sara was intent on saving her beloved son from the stings of the angry bees.  And she did divert them.  They turned and began to attack her too.  Wayne had to get all of them in the car as fast as possible and head to the nearest hospital which was quite a way from there, all the while hoping to get his wife there in time before she went into anaphylactic shock.  She could have easily died.  She knew she was allergic to the bees, but it didn’t matter to her at the time.  She was solely focused on saving her child from the angry swarm.

Steve:  Stories don’t do that much for me, but they do for most people. 

Sheryl:  And they do for me because from a mama’s heart, I so relate to that.  And I just wanted you to know how much I appreciated that because you helped me to understand it with that.  The terms that he used, I didn’t get it.

Wayne:  Only seven percent of the population would get the terms he gets.  A lot of people love that discussion, penal substitution or substitutionary atonement.  People love those terms and really see ideas as the way to negotiate truth. 

Sheryl:  He does.

Wayne:  Most people, I think over ninety percent, would much more engage with the story.  That’s why Jesus told stories.  Jesus is a storyteller. 

Sheryl:  But when you related the one about the mama’s heart, that was just like an arrow to my heart.  I thought, whoof, I get it.  One of my phobias, my fears in life, is bees.  A bee comes around, and I’m petrified.  But if one of my kids was getting ready to be stung, I would so go in there without a second thought.  And I would be all over that bee.  And I’d tell my kids, “Get away.”  You know, as a mama I would do that. 

Steve:  One of the terms that you used today, and I also heard it on your podcast, was “Pharasectomy.”  Could you say what led up to your Pharasectomy and maybe tell us a little bit about what you were like before you had that spiritual operation?  What led up to it.

Wayne:  I’m still having it and (with) the truth in packaging laws, it’s not original to me.  I was actually in Alaska and meeting with a group of Christians up there and this one lady, who kind of helped organize things, she was kind of the grand mama of the group, I heard them talk about her, but she was not there at the first or so.  She had other things going on. 

She comes in Saturday noonish, late in the day and the people were all excited to see her.  You just knew this was that kind of woman everybody loves. So she walked in, and I introduced myself to her.  We were in kind of in a group discussion at the time.    I said, “How’re you doing?”   And she goes, “I’m in the middle of my Pharasectomy, and it’s killing me.”  It was the first time I ever heard the term, and I thought it was just hilarious. 

Sheryl:  That’s priceless!

Wayne:  Pharasectomy is simply getting your inner Pharisee removed; it’s kind of your appendectomy kind of a thing.

Steve:  How bad of a Pharisee were you.  Were you like Paul?

Wayne:  I spent forty years feeding the inner Pharisee, so yeah, and I was good.  I think I would have been a Paul type in his day because I’m very good at the performance end of things.  I wasn’t like a struggling Pharisee.  I can cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s.  I can be disciplined.  I can, by sheer force of will, make myself do what I think needs to be done.  So yeah, I was pretty good at climbing that ladder.

If you can perform well, perform well.  Righteousness is its own reward.  I’m always nuts about that, but the downside of it is the contempt in which you hold others who don’t work as hard as you work and the religious arrogance of I’ve earned a special place with God because I worked harder than you.  I think those are the damaging (aspects).

Steve:  What knocked you down on the Damascus Road?

Wayne:  I don’t look so much as an event was climactic as God just in various ways over various times keeps trying to knock on this door.  And not knowing it’s Him doing the knocking, you just resist it.  You keep doing what you think is right to do.  I think that is so much of our journey.  But what I was  noticing in those times is the life of God, is Him being expressive to me.  And then I would ignore those leanings that would have taken me on a different path and would “religion up” more.  And then that life would fade away.  ‘Cause God is inviting us into life, and religion is inviting us into death.  I was in that up and down thing. 

The final straw, if you want to get to that, was being resigned from a pastorate by my best friend/co-pastor.  Yeah, I said resigned in the passive voice ‘cause he was wanting the church to go in a different direction than I was; we had some bit of struggle in that.  We had been friends for fifteen years, close personal friends.  Our kids grew up in each other’s homes.  But his passion to have this group be what he needed it to be required a Wayne-ectomy, I guess.  The first thing that started was a Wayne-ectomy from a group I’d been a part of for fifteen years, people I deeply loved, and some very specific instructions from God in my heart about not defending myself, not defending my reputation, not taking a position back, letting it go, letting God teach me something different. 

That began a journey of grace.  It wasn’t that alone, but it was that with hearing a teaching on the cross about it not being just penal substitution, but curing sin, God healing sin, being really transformed in my thinking about Who God was.  Jesus was always an enduring character for me, always from Scripture.  The Father was not.  The Father was somebody you had to know to get the goodies, and Jesus was the one Who was safe.  God was angry.  I didn’t want to be in God’s presence if I wasn’t hiding behind Jesus’ robes because God was not endearing to me.

Steve:  We have a lot of the Old Testament examples that were brought up the other day – the two sons of Aaron who offered strange fire to the Lord and they were smote immediately.  It’s a lot easier to see the anger of God in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.  How did your perspective change on that?

Wayne:  One, by getting to know Him.  There’s this door of grace and freedom and getting to know God as Father.  To me the term “The Father” is a designation, a title God has, a costume he wears.  But I get to know him as an endearing father, that began to change.  Whoa!   Maybe my reading of the Old Testament has been skewed by this religious need to have an angry God to hold us in check.  Scripture says that Jesus is the exact representation and nature of the Father.  So when we see Jesus treating a woman at a well, Zacchaeus and his greed, a woman caught in adultery, James and John and their selfish ambitions to be in the top of the kingdom, when you watch Him treat those people, that’s not the good side of God.  That’s God treating Zacchaeus and the way God treats them.

Sheryl:  I’ve got a question.  This is kind of an opinion I’m asking of you.  You talked about how people can relate to Jesus, but they have a hard time relating to the Father.  And I can understand that because Jesus is Jesus.  We call Him by His name.  He’s our older brother.  He’s our best friend.  We can relate to Him.  But the Father, it’s like we put Him up on a pedestal somewhere, and it’s almost like He’s unattainable.  The term the Father, do you think that’s a mistranslation, maybe?  That people instead of calling him Daddy or Papa, people call Him the Father.  The word “the,” do you think maybe that’s a mistranslation or contorted somehow?  People have a hard time relating to the Father up there.

Wayne:  The term’s there.  It’s in the Greek.  We know God’s not a man.  We know God’s spirit.  Him taking on ‘the Father” is Him taking on a metaphor for our culture that’s meaningful because we’re all born to need a father.  He is the father of all fathers.  When we get that, we’re fine with the term “the Father.” 

I think what’s happened is religion has played good cop/bad cop.  Jesus is the good guy.  He comes down and rescues us.  And in the penal substitution thing of the cross is Jesus actually saves us from His father.  In the language of the New Testament, Jesus is saving us from sin, from the destruction of flesh.  He’s not saving us from His father.  I think the religious construct of needing people to live in fear uses Jesus as the good cop .  We get to smooze (with) Him.  He’s the good guy.  The Father is the judge, and boy if you don’t get it right…..  And religion gets to use both with us  -- the carrot and the stick.  The carrot is with Jesus.  Beat us over the head with the stick of the Father.  That’s what’s ruined it.  It’s not the term.  The term would be incredibly endearing.  We can say the father of all fathers. 

Steve:  So what do you do with the Old Testament mindset that we see as God’s anger?  What do you do with that?

Wayne:  I try to let Scripture say what it says.  All of us know somebody incredibly loving, kind, and compassionate who has a moment of outrage at some moment of injustice or some moment of danger, and they’ll suddenly exert a capacity to break into somewhere and exert incredible strength or incredible passion, or whatever.  I think that’s what we’re seeing in the Old Testament.  The grandest message of the Old Testament is God is slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness.  That’s Old Testament language.  I think religion has obscured the God of the Bible by pulling out these moments; we talked about this some over the weekend. 

For instance, the generation of Noah.   The sin was just so much, God couldn’t take anymore, so he killed everybody else beside Noah (and his family).  You’ve got then God as the punisher of sin.  I think the more likely scenario, knowing what I know about God, is God is trying to keep humanity in the place where He can grow us up enough in the culture for us to finally embrace the grace He wants to reveal in the Son. 

I don’t think God just waited 4500 years to send the Son because “I just wanted them to slave under law.”  I think God’s trying to grow up culture.  There are times when sin is so rampant in the community that he takes people out to change the equation, to reset humanity.  I think part of that’s going on when God’s judging some of the rebellious people in the children of Israel.  Gods trying to move them from Egypt to the Promised Land.  People are acting out in rebellion that other people want to act out in, too, because following God is not easy.  You say, “Picking up manna every morning, God’s providing, and hey what could be better?”  But then you get tired of  manna, and you wonder what if it’s not there tomorrow, and we’re dependent on God; and most of us don’t want to be dependent upon God.  We want to find our own conventions and people rise up against Moses, ultimately rising up against God to take now this generation of people captive to rebellion.

God, at times, exercises His wrath, not His anger.  I don’t see it as anger.  I see God’s wrath as rescue, as protection, His zeal -- “I’m going to protect these people by taking you two out.”  Is it punishment for them?  In the way we look at things in the temporal way, that killed them?  It’s a capital punishment offense.  From God’s way of looking at things, “I removed you from a place where you were destructive.”  And now are they in His presence?  We don’t know where they are.” 

In his book He Loves Me!, Wayne describes God’s wrath in this way:  “His wrath against sin was not his rejection of us in anger, but only a reflection of the depth of his love that cannot look away unconcerned as sin destroys us.”

Ananias and Sapphira are a great example.  Were they unbelievers God just killed because they were evil, or were they wonderful people who got caught lying at a time when God didn’t need a lie in the church; and so He said, “So you know what?  I’m going to take you home.”  We don’t know the answer to that question, but religion loves the story.  “And I say if you don’t do it right, God will kill you.”  We know God doesn’t kill people for lying because we’re all sitting here.

Steve:  You use the expression “Religion needs fear to exist.”  Would you explain that for us?

Wayne held some of his conversations in a rented church building.

Wayne:  Religion is boring, isn’t it?  It is for me.  I mean follow the rules and on our best day we can’t follow all the rules so we merely get good at pretending we’re keeping the rules.  The rituals of religion are incredibly boring after the first few weeks or years.  Some people love them even seventy years into it.  I don’t get those people, but for me incredibly boring. 

It’s like going to the dentist.  I don’t go to the dentist because I enjoy it.  I go to the dentist because I don’t want my teeth to rot out of my head.  I hate it.  I’m one of those freaks that’s not happy there.   When I was a kid, I had to be threatened with going.  Nobody threatened me to go to Disneyland.  No one said, “ You know, Wayne.  I’ve got really bad news for you.  You’re going to Disneyland tomorrow, but you must go.”  Nobody. 

I think God’s life, what Jesus brought to us in the Gospels is irresistible if you know it, if you see it.  Religion is not.  Religion is an onerous set of obligations and the only way to get people to do obligations, you have to threaten them with fear or bribe them with blessing.  You’ve got to in some way manipulate their choices to do what’s in your best interest, even if it’s not.

Steve:  Now in The Shack, Jesus doesn’t like to use the word “Christian.”  You also seem to have mixed feelings about the term.  Could you explain why that word may not be that good to use?

Wayne:  It’s fine to use.  I am a follower of Christ.  But when I get asked that on an airplane or (by) people I don’t know, “Are you a Christian?” I always want to hedge that a little bit and say, “What do you mean by that?”  Because Christianity has become, over two thousand years, a religion.  There’s a religion called Christianity, and it has certain expectations, certain demands, certain rituals.  And they vary from group to group, but the common one seems to be “If you don’t have your tail end in a pew at 10 o’clock on Sunday morning, you’re probably not a believer.” 

And there’s this demand that we practice Christianity by fitting into certain expectations.  And so people are asking me, “Are you a good practitioner of a religion called Christianity?”  I’m not.  I gave that religion up fifteen years ago, and I’m still giving it up in the ongoing process of my Pharasectomy.   But if people mean by Christian, “Are you trying, are you hoping, are you wanting to live as Christ lived in the world?  Are you a follower of Jesus?”  That I am.  But most people asking me if I’m a Christian aren’t asking me if I’m a follower of Jesus.  So, I always like to qualify, “What are you asking?”  If you’re asking if I’m a good practitioner of Christianity, I am not.  I’ve got lots of people that tell you that I am not.  (If you’re asking) if I’m a passionate follower of Jesus, I am.  I want to be as He is, so I want to be in the world.  And that’s a different journey for me. 

Steve:  It seems like a lot of people come across your book or your podcast after or about the time they start embarking on house church.  I read So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, and I was very shocked about what it said about house church.  The main character is an ex-associate pastor at a megachurch.  God frees him from a lot of the religious stuff he was doing, and he assumes, well, the next step is house church.  Then the character who is kind of his mentor, all through the book we’re wondering is this guy or is this guy not the apostle John, says well that’s not such a big thing, and he really wasn’t pushing house church.  Could you explain that?

Wayne:  Yeah, we wrote the book.  We could do whatever we wanted with the guy.  Before that book ever was written, I had written an article called Why I Don’t Go to Church Anymore on the website and as part of  the newsletter that I do.  And that got a lot of rah, rah rahs from the house church movement.  And so then I wrote the article Why House Church Isn’t the Answer so I could tick off those people too.  Just so I’d be an equal opportunity offender.  I just think anything we use as an expression of church that acts as a substitute for knowing Christ becomes idolatrous in the long run. 

A lot of the passion of the house church movement, not always exclusively but in many ways, is driven by guys who were pastors or want to be pastors, who are now outside that (and) still need a way to make an income.  So now it’s a network coordinator of a house church kind of a thing.  I understand that.  I understand the desire to feel like I have an equipping gift and I want to find expression for it.  How do I make a living at it? 

I think the tendency is always, “Okay.  This form is wrong.  I’m going to grab another form.”  And I was part of a group that did that.  We moved from this to a community of house churches and that community got a little bit disarrayed, so let’s do house church.  Then you realize that’s not the answer either.  ‘Cause if you’ve got religious people in a house church, people are still practicing religion. 

This is where I think the Catholics have it right.  If you’re going to have a pope, you want that guy in Rome so you don’t have to see him ever if you don’t want to.  What the evangelicals have done post-Reformation, is we’ve put a pope in every town and across the backyard and people tell us what to do and what’s right and what we should do.  I think we’ve got it just nuts. 

If you’re going to be religious and put it in a home, it’s 100 more times more dangerous than having a religion in a building, because then we’re personally involved in each other’s lives, manipulating each other for the end that we need to feel good about me.  So I don’t think house church is the answer. 

I think house-sized groupings of people sharing a journey is the best – twos and threes.  I’m nuts about house-sized fellowship dinners sharing the journey.  I’m nuts about that.  At times I’m nuts about let’s get five thousand people in a building and have song and exalt God.  I’m not against that either.  But when either one of those becomes the replacement for my own growth in the knowledge of who God is, then we’ve lost something, and however we’re doing church becomes destructive.

Steve:  A lot of that is difficult to visualize, but you had a very good example.  The other day you were talking about the group in Ireland that’s been following God from the 70s on.  They came from the Catholic Church originally.  They haven’t been having regular monthly meetings.  It’s more like an impromptu thing, but it seems to be working for them.  Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Wayne:  Yeah. There’s lots of groups similar to that.  I just used them as an illustration, but there’s a lot of folks that are just saying,  “You know what?  If we’re following God as individuals, and having the passion to share that community with family, we’re going to have plenty of opportunities to get together when there’s a reason to be together.” 

Ritualization is we’re getting together every week because this is something good for us.  Nothing every week, I don’t think, you can sustain an interest level in if it’s just a routine.  If people are getting together every week to feed the poor, to do something together, that you can sustain.  That’s different.  We’re doing something together that we’re passionate about the outcome. 

If we’re just sitting in a room staring at each other, someone has to come up with a prayer, a teaching, a something.  People do get bored with that over time if they’re honest about it.  I mean the first three or four weeks, if we’re starting a new church, this is exciting.  And then, “Crud.  Wednesday night.  I’ve got to go again.”

So much of what we invest in church is, “I have certain insecurities and needs that I want this group of people to meet.  I’ve already put them in the place of Jesus.  I’m asking them to be Jesus to me.”  And on our best day, we’re going to fail. 

Steve:  What are some of the things the Irish people have been doing?

Wayne:  Part of their decision (was) they were forming a church.  And they felt like God said, “I didn’t ask you to do this.  In fact, I don’t want you to meet unless you have my purpose in it.”  And the purpose is not to meet.  The purpose is they might get together for six weeks to study something.  They might get together for a night to celebrate someone’s birthday. 

For almost 40 years now , they have lived in and around the south part of Dublin, a community that was 40 (to) 50 people, to 200, sometimes 250 to 300.  What’s amazing about the group, not only do they have this whole local intersection of relationships and celebration and kids growing up together and 60^th birthday parties where 200 people come and have dinner at a restaurant and that’s there community, it’s great, but nobody has a 60^th birthday every week and something else will happen.

40 of them will go to vacation together in Switzerland and go on a trekking thing to the Alps, and then they also got connected with believers in South Africa and New Zealand and Australia who live this same journey.  So partly over the summer, ten of these people from Ireland are flying down to South Africa to hang out with believers living in the same way and then a bunch of them have gone to New Zealand and then the South Africans come up and spend some time with the folks in Ireland.  Some of the folks that they knew from Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia, and the horrible crisis that’s going on there, the people from Ireland and New Zealand sending money to help with the people living in Zimbabwe.  It’s not just a localized community, us and no more, they live this vibrant interconnected real body life. 

But when people say, “I want to go to Dublin and visit them,” they all say “When do they meet?”  I can’t tell you when they meet.  I can give you names of people that you can go and intersect with and see what they’re up to on any given day, but we just don’t know because it varies.

I don’t know another church in the world that formed a church forty years ago that  you can say about all the people that were involved forty years ago, they’re still great friends.  The average church in America splits every six-point-seven years.  People who were very, very good friends getting caught because now they’ve got a church institution for which they want different things out of it.  “I want hymns.  You want choruses.  I don’t like drums.  They’re annoying to me.  Well, I want an organ.  I don’t want that teaching.  I want this kind of teaching.  I don’t want red carpet.  I want green carpet.”  We don’t have the example of forty-year friendships that exist in institutions.  They split and divide because they’re all about our personal preferences subjected on a community of people.

The reason they’ve got forty years together is because they’ve never owned a building, they’ve never paid a guy to be their pastor.  They’ve lived as friends and those friendships have endured.  All the friendships I’ve had in my life have endured except the ones where we tried to share something and then our preferences got in the way of the friendship.  And it was about controlling each other and not loving each other.

Sheryl:  I’ve often said, “Anytime there’s somebody, or a small group of somebodies, who want to control, that is where Satan enters in, and it all blows up.”

Wayne:  Because of my need.  It’s meeting my needs.  I think for a lot of people, because Christianity is a religion they’re practicing, they’re trying to get from the church what they’ve never found in the Father.  And so we help people find it in the Father.  But when they’re finding it in the Father, God will often let other people be a resource to be of encouragement, of instruction, of whatever.  But I’m seeing the Father’s hand in that.  I’m not (saying), “Please teach me what God’s not teaching me.”  It’s never that.

Steve:  I’m sure a lot of this is hard to follow for people who weren’t at the conference, but to put it really simply, what should we do to have more of God in our life?

Wayne enjoyed sharing in home fellowships.

Wayne:  No question that ever starts with what do I do ever ends well.  We don’t do anything.  And I know that scares people -- “O my gosh, you can’t say that because I want to be in control.  I want to do something.”  That’s where religion starts.  The religion starts with the “I do.” 

The people that came to Jesus – “What must I do to have eternal life?”  Jesus said, “Oh, you want to do something.  Well, how about keeping all the law?”  “I’m already doing that.”  “Oh, okay.  Well then, how about giving away everything you have to the poor and following Me?”  And the guy goes, “E-e-e-e-e!  I can’t do that.” 

And Jesus’ point is, “What’s impossible for man is possible with God.”  Having eternal life in the Father is a work He does in us.  To me, that is bedrock to people who get this journey and  people who don’t.  “I want to do for God,” as wonderfully motivated as that is will not get you into the life. 

Brad (Cummings) and I, we have a podcast called The God Journey.  We were working on a book before The Shack came into our lives that we’re getting back to at some point, and the book was called The God Journey, and we were calling it the anti-discipleship book.  This is not how you build a relationship with God.  This is all the discipleship books are,  “You should read your Bible and pray, go to church and tithe.  This is how you build a relationship with God.” 

Don’t we know thousands of people who are doing all those steps and still feel spiritually empty?  I’m sure a lot of people reading this are feeling the same thing.  “I’ve done all those things.”  Well, that’s where the honesty starts.  Okay, so it’s not those things that do it.  So then we look for better things or a better Bible program or a better church to visit.  We’re still thinking there’s something I can do out there. 

The book we want to write is not how do you build a relationship with God, (but) how do you recognize the Father building one with you?  This is in His hands.  Our response is we either cooperate with Him, follow that nudging, see where He leads us, let Him in, or we don’t.  

Sheryl:   The thing that you said about going to church, reading your Bible, praying, doing all these things daily because people feel like they have to, it’s an obligation.  It isn’t because, “Oh, I can’t wait to get in there and spend time with God.  I can’t wait, you know, to get into my prayer closet and just commune with God, and or I can’t wait to get into the word.”

It generally isn’t like that.  People have been taught from the time they’re little that you’ve got to get into the word every day.  You’ve got to  pray every day.  You’ve got to go to church three times a week or however often your church meets.  Isn’t it more the obligation thing? 

Just like if I told my husband in order to please me, he has to do steps one, two, three four, on down to step forty-five and if he doesn’t do these on a regular basis every day, the love just isn’t going to be there.  Isn’t that what you’re saying?  Do I have you wrong?

Wayne:  No.  There’s nothing wrong with Bible reading.  There’s nothing wrong with hanging out with brothers and sisters.  But when it’s an obligation, it doesn’t always mean, “ I just love it.  I can’t wait to read my Bible today.”  I have an ongoing growing relationship with God.  Some days that’s great.  Some days it’s a bit of a struggle.  Some days I’m, you know, not loving where He’s inviting me into, not wanting to face what He wants me to face in my life.  But because I love Him, we’re going to work that out over the days that unfold.

So I’m not always talking about a euphoric “I can’t wait to read my Bible today,” but it’s like when I’m having an ongoing relationship with Him, the Bible to me is like an email from Sara when I’m overseas outside of phone range.  We don’t do it here when I’m in the states because I can pick up a phone and call Sara pretty much anytime I want.  Overseas I get email from Sara and that’s our only link because I don’t have a phone that I can get to to do it.  I don’t read that because I should; you know,  “Stupid Sara wrote me another letter today, I’d better sit down and read this stupid letter.”  My relationship with Sara makes that meaningful. 

I think what most people have missed about Scripture is they haven’t had a meaningful relationship with the Author that makes what He writes endearing.  And therefore we misinterpret what He writes.  And we talked about the Old Testament earlier.  If you read the Old Testament in the morning, or even the New, and you come out with, “Oh God’s angry with me because I’m not working hard enough,” you’re not going to be in the Scripture, and if you are, it’s not going to be helpful to you.  When God becomes an endearing presence in your life, and He invites you into the Scriptures to unveil to you His heart and His words and His thoughts and His life, you’ll be there.  You’ll be there with bells on. 

I think the thing that is important (is) God will nudge us into that reality.  We short-circuit that process by throwing the obligation on first, “You read the Bible every day now if you’re a Christian.” 

Sheryl:  On the same hand, take for example your example if Sara wrote you an email and you were getting ready to go to another town, another country, whatever and you knew you didn’t have time to read it.  “Oh, I can’t wait to get to that, but I’ve got to do this.”  So you go off and you come back two days later.  It’s not like she’s mad at you for not having read that day or even the next day.  

Wayne:  Exactly.  But also the fix would be if I get an email from Sara and I go, “Aw, crud.  Not another one,” that speaks loudly to me.  The problem is not I should read her emails as a good husband; the problem is there’s something in my relationship to Sara that is broken.  I need to fix that.  I don’t need to read the emails as discipline.  That won’t fix it.  Though fixing it is, “Why am I not excited that this email came from my wife today?”

Steve:  Right.  I think you’re saying things, like getting something from the Bible or meeting with people, they’re not what gets you into the relationship.  They’re signs that it’s outworking properly.

Wayne:  Yes.  I think we’ve missed this from Acts.  We’ve seen church as the modality by which we secure the life of God among the people of God.  In the book of Acts, the church was an afterthought.  They didn’t start Pentecost to start a church.  There were no church planting teams that went to Thessalonica or any place else in the world.  We talk about church planters from the New Testament.  There are no church planters in the New Testament.  There are men and women who took the Gospel into places where it wasn’t known and helped people come to discover the God they knew and taught them how to follow Him. 

They came back later and found churches.  Because church is just the fruit of people who are loving God together and what God gives them to do, how He networks them and how they experience life together.  The church is the fruit of something.  We’ve tried to make it the means to an end.  And I think it is the fruit, so in Acts 2:42 here’s all the wonderful things the church was doing.  We should copy that and we’ll have church, instead of  – no, no – what we need to copy is “Follow Him.”  We need to copy “Come alive in Christ.”  When brothers and sisters who are alive in Christ get near each other, the church takes on some incredible expressions.  And it’s not work.  It’s never work.

Steve:  How do we come alive in Christ?

The analogy I love to tell about this is when my wife and I took some dance lessons.  My daughter wanted me to dance at her wedding, a father/daughter dance.  I’m not a dancer.  I grew up with “dancing is of the devil.”  I didn’t do any of that.  My daughter wants me to dance at her wedding day; I’m sorry.  I’m going to do it.

And I’m a pretty outgoing guy.  So I’ve got 300 of my best friends at my daughter’s wedding who are going to want to mock me for every stupid dance step I have out there.  So, I’m going to take lessons so I don’t look like a total frog.  Our first lesson we were doing the little waltzing, three-step thing.  Footprints are on the floor and all that stuff.  We’re looking horrible.  Sara’s never done this.  I’ve never done this.  It’s all mechanical.  It’s forced.  No one seeing it would call it dancing. 

After about forty-five seconds of that he cut us off and said, “I want to show you this stuff.”  Six couples were at this thing.  He said, “You know in dancing only one of you needs to know the dance.  And he cued the dance music, and he grabbed my wife and he danced her all around the dance floor.  It looked like Sara had been dancing all her life. 

Now the point of that was she didn’t know how to do anything. He, because he’s the leader, he knows how to pull her arm here, push her hip there, move her with his hip.  He was spinning her, twirling her, waltzing her.  I tell you, Sara will never look that good on a dance floor again because mostly she’s going to dance with me. 

Could Sara have resisted that moment?  When he pulled her out could she have locked her knees and said, “No.  I’m not going?”  Could she when he pulled her this way pulled him back another way and it wouldn’t have been dancing at all?  Yes.  Sara had the will to exercise, which could have been, “I don’t like this.  I don’t want to go.  Lock my knees.”  He’s dragging her around the dance floor.  It’s frightful.  When he whispered in her ear as he pulled her up, he said, “Just relax.”  If she’ll just relax, he can take her on the journey. 

I know stuff for guys, cause we’re the guys.  We want to lead and all that stuff.  And I know there’s a lot in Scripture about being sons of God that even women have to crawl into that analogy because being a son of God means something. 

But this is the feminine analogy we guys crawl into.  We are the bride of Christ.  He is the lead.  Invitation to the Kingdom is, “Will you follow Me?  Will you let Me lead?”   And the one thing we don’t want to do is let Him lead. 

We learned in kindergarten, “If you don’t watch out for yourself, no one else will.  You’ve got to protect yourself.  You need to be in control.”   We learned all that stuff as kids. 

Learning to let go and just follow Him, if there’s any doing, that’s what we do.  But ninety percent of that is, “Would you relax enough to come along instead of fighting Me for what you want in your own life?” 

Read Steve Eastman's review of The Shack.

Read Steve Eastman's review of He Loves Me!

Read Steve Eastman's review of So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore.

Listen to Wayne Jacobsen's podcast.