A Dream

Given all the current unrest and heartache in North Africa, I was so blessed to receive this testimony.  I have checked the veracity of this story, and it was confirmed from two different sources, both directly connected to the event.  Praise God for what He is doing in the midst of such struggle.  My encouragement to us all is to try to look beyond geo-political agendas, and media coverage when it comes to the inevitable spin that gets put on such events.  The reason is, that God's ways are not our ways.  He is doing far beyond what we could ask or think, and even in the middle of destruction, He bring beauty from the ashes.  Bless you as you read this blessing . . .

N.Africa:  "A young man was very dedicated to Islam.  His parents were very proud of him.  However this young man became very sick psychologically.  It happened very suddenly.  His desperate parents looked everywhere for help to heal him, even trying witchcraft. Nothing worked. One night the father dreamed that his son was in a pit full of snakes, all biting him.  In the dream he tried to pull his son out of the pit.  All in vain.  Suddenly, a man appeared, of tremendous beauty and glory wearing a white robe.  The man reached down into the pit and took his son by the hand to lift him out.  But the son was holding on to something in his other hand.  The shining man told him to release it.  It was a copy of the Qu'ran.  As soon as he released it, he was lifted out of the pit and the snake bites disappeared.  The father was so happy to see his son rescued and healed.  He woke up, fascinated by the dream and began to search for its meaning.  Some who follow Jesus heard about it and visited him, telling him who the man in white was.  On hearing this, the father gave his life to Christ.  They then prayed for the son, and he was healed.  The entire family now has begun to walk the path!"

A Provocative Perspective

"For the Apostle Paul, you do not live in the world and go to church. You live in the Church and go to the world. Take off your head, shake it and put it back on; because that was not the way any of us were trained to think. Church, for Paul, is not something you attend. Church is something you organically are—or not! It is more a living organism than a formal organization. You don't join it as much as you breathe it. He is announcing an existing mystery more than establishing a new institution."

-- Richard Rohr

If this is truly the case, then my understanding of what I am really a part of needs to change.  Church is not a destination any more than Worship is only a noun. 

And while I may align myself with this or that denominational or non-denominational structure, I am "connected" to brothers and sisters around the world by a "spiritual ethnicity" that binds me closer to them than just about any other relationship I have - Jesus took that "spiritual ethnicity" so seriously, He said some very difficult things every time He was confronted by a challenge to prefer blood or even family ethnicity (see Luke 14). 

It is very true that in many cases, I have more in common with my persecuted brothers and sisters in Palestine or China than I do my own extended generational family.  And it is in this that I find the "real" definition of Koinonia - a community/communion/family/united expression of the Body of Christ that extends a loving invitation to all, to come to the table of celebration that God has prepared through the sacrifice and resurrection of His Son.

Worship Is Breath In Another Form

Worship is another one of those critical threshold moments where Heaven and Earth intersect, and engage in the same holy activity in time and space, and in eternal presence.  Man I wish I could "live" as if that is true all the time, rather than grind through hours and days "killing" time vs. radically investing it. 

Worship is not a commodity.  Nor is it a style, or a program.  Worship is breath in another form. 

It is life-giving, and life sustaining.  It should be constant, and it is totally necessary.  It is found in obedience, and intimacy.  It can seem so hard to maintain, even though many times it comes in waves and we drown in it. 

We receive worship in the sense that without Jesus' worship, His sacrifice, and even His constant vigilance as our High Priest, we don't stand a chance.  We draw in His grace like a breath of sweet air and as a result, we live. 

We give worship in the sense that in whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever we say, and whatever we think, we demonstrate our allegiance, our hope, our love, and our faith, as being given to the Deity or some devil or some idol in between. 

I don't know if we will "breathe" in heaven, but I do know we will worship.  It's one of the few activities here on earth that we are guaranteed to continue there.  Let us worship therefore as we breathe, for in this is the oxygen for our souls.

A Christmas Wish for Beirut

Have you thought about how you can bring the Gospel to a few thousand young people in the Middle East this Christmas?

Through music, the Word of God, storytelling, and other art forms, the Gospel will be brought to Lebanon this December. The Bill Drake Band, a ministry of OM Arts International will have the opportunity to minister to thousands of young people in Beirut.

Working with local churches, the Gospel will be presented in schools and concert venues around the city. This is an unprecedented opportunity!

$12,000 needs to be raised to cover airfare, food, lodging and transportation for the team of 8.

Will you pray and partner with us to help illuminate the truth of Christmas for people who so desperately need to hear this message?

For residents of the USA, give securely online by clicking here.

Or give a support gift through your local OM office with the notation: OMUSA-9071BDBL10   Click here for your local OM office.

The Arts and the Incarnation

As we move closer to the Christmas Season, I always find myself meditating on the mystery and the glory of the Incarnation.  God becomes flesh.  And not just that - He goes so far through His Holy Spirit to dwell in us!  On the one hand this seems metaphysically outrageous, religious nonsense.  On the other hand, it is actually our only hope - "Christ in us, the hope of glory" (see the entire argument in Colossians 1:13-27). 

This makes the Incarnation a missional move by God, Who employs the incarnation to rescue and ransom His beloved.  The implications of this, when married with Christ's mandate to "seek first the Kingdom of God", are that incarnational and missional living is what we were born for, what we were created to do, and as such, are never more God-like ourselves than when we emulate Him by living accordingly. 

I have often wondered (I guess because my mind works this way!), who "proclaimed" the better sermons - Billy Graham, or Mother Theresa.  This may seem a non-sequitur, but the question begs a deeper truth.  Proclamation is not only a matter of verbal message - Christ is the Word and the Image of the Invisible God, and we are to follow in His steps, not only intellectual collections of correct doctrine, but also living and breathing imitations of Jesus who care, cry, bleed, pray, worship, live, and die.

"The historic argument for the use of the arts in worship is grounded in the Incarnation. The claim is that God, by becoming a person, sanctified physical and material reality as a vehicle for spiritual presence. He comes to us through flesh and blood. Why, then, shouldn't we accept appropriate art forms as visible means through which we offer our praise?"

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God's Mighty Deeds of Salvation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1992), 12-13.

Is What You're Living For Worth Dying For?

One of the main highlights of our Tour in Germany this past summer, was doing a Wear The Crown concert for close to 8,500 young people in Aidlingen, Germany near Stuttgart.    The concert starts with a butterfly, signifying a new-born believer opening her wings and trying out her new-found faith, only to be sorely tempted by Materialism and Narcissism, and then re-focused to draw near to the Cross of Christ.

As my team and I have brought this message all over the world, many times I actually sense the enemy saying to me, "Bill, you are getting WAY to radical here.  Lighten up!"  Such a challenge to put before folks:  Is What You're Living For Worth Dying For?  But the the voice of the martyrs cries out to us - louder - more compelling -  not to guilt us as we look upon the death and torture, but rather, to challenge us to step up to the same bar, and make the same investment and commitment.

I am totally convinced that a person will never know why they are alive, unless the purpose for their life is wrapped up in God's purposes for the world.  One of my favorite sayings, (and something I must always keep telling myself) is, He has no fear who has nothing to lose.  I also firmly believe that I'll never really start understanding, until I start obeying.  Shall we "die" together my friends?

The Lock and The Door

 

The young woman looked at her painting, and wondered,  "How could God ever use this?"  Being in a Muslim country with a team of visual artists, she had been struggling to render the concept they had been asked to paint:  "I am the door", those beautiful words of Jesus that invite us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But she had painted a lock.  The heavy, massive medieval kind, that looked impenetrable and imposing.  How could this communicate – how could God take that which she really hadn't painted all that well in her opinion, and use it for His glory?

The old man strolled slowly through the open-air art gallery that had suddenly appeared in the plaza.  He surveyed the beautiful pictures of doors and gates.  But there was one, a lock.  He stood stunned, as the revelation hit him – someone had just painted his life, his longing, his desperate condition of being locked out from the light.  Light that he just knew was there for him, but had been so elusive in his own religious tradition.  He knew in the moment he saw the painting, that the artist who painted it had the insight and wisdom he had been seeking his entire life.

The young woman approached the old man, and through interpretation asked him why he was staring spellbound at her meager painting.  Through tears, the man said to her, "My entire life I have felt locked out from all God had for me.  I can see it through the keyhole, but I can't get to it.  Can you please tell me, what is the key that will unlock the door of my life, and let me run into the light of God?"  The young woman at that moment had the privilege of sharing the love of Christ, right there on the sidewalk.  The Holy Spirit had used her humble painting to unravel this man's heart, and draw him to the Father heart of God.