Full Sail Ministries' Year End Newsletter 2020

new way T HE

YEA R E N D N EWS L E T T E R

new wa TH E

OF LOVE

A NEW COMMANDMENT: THE NEW WAY OF LOVE ( J O H N 1 3 : 1 - 1 7 ) (BY GEOFF) It was their final meal together. The moment when He could tell them, show them, one last time. Up close. Very close. Just this one last time.

Before He hung His love up for the world, He would bare it all again before His friends. And so, knowing where He’d come from and where He was going, He made His move.

He tool off His outer shirt and laid bare the chest that held His heart – beating with passion for His friends to know Him. He picked up a basin, filled it with water, grabbed His towel…and showed them the full extent of His love.

The air must have gone out of the room as pride, position, and fear of abandonment choked their own hearts, trying desperately to cling to power. Their whole lives, slavery to the lie that God wasn’t trustworthy and good had fed off their insecurities. Suddenly, Love filled the room like oxygen.

One by one, Love washed the dirty, smelly feet of His friends. He gets to Peter and Peter resists.

“You’ll never wash my feet!” he says. In the culture of the day, the washing of the feet was a job for slaves, or outsider Gentiles, or women. The lowest in the room. What Jesus did in a matter of minutes changed everything they thought was normal and challenged their religious underpinnings from lifetimes of certainty.

Jesus tells Peter, “If I don’t wash your feet, you can have no part in me.” “Then wash my hands and head as well!” Peter retorts. In response, Jesus explains to him that since He’s already had a bath, only his feet need attention.

So much can be said about this interaction and this account from John. Many books have

been written to expound on all of the things Jesus was communicating throughout that evening. But one thing is worth noting. One thing that we believe the Holy Spirit is still saying to us.

Today. Where we live. It centers around how we are to approach one another in relationship.

Jesus toweled off their feet, gently blessing them. The part of their bodies that actually connected with the earth and the limbs that were going to be used to travel the individual paths before each one of them. Paths of abiding love and paths of trouble.

The book of John was one of the last books of the Bible written. And of the four Gospels written by men who spent the most time with Jesus, John is the only one who included this story from that night. Seems after a lifetime of ref lecting on his time with Jesus before the cross and the relationship he enjoyed with Him since, the Holy Spirit brought this moment front and center to John’s heart.

Jesus is inviting us to follow His example To love each other the way He loves us. To humbly make the choice to prefer the other.

To assume the lower place. To lay down our lives by lifting an other up. If the weapon of choice in the past was a sword, it is now being replaced with a towel.

Because of Him, we know who we are. We are worthy of His love. He valued and loved us so much that He was willing to lay down His very life. We have been restored to our place in His Family. We have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, living in us. (Ephesians 1:20-21) If ever there was a moment in our world’s history when this kind of love was needed, surely it’s now.

And so now…we live! We love as He does. And we take up the basin and towel.

ay

SO MANY CHANGES HAVE HAPPENED IN AND A R O U N D U S T H I S Y E A R T H AT H AV E D E E P LY A F FECTED OUR COMMUNITIES , OUR RELATIONSHIPS, AND OUR OWN SOULS. WE BELIEVE JESUS IS ASKING US TO JOIN HIM IN NEW AND INNOVATIVE WAYS . THE OLD WAYS DON’ T WORK ANYMORE . WE NEED A NEW WAY. AND HE’ S SHOWN US THE NEW WAY…

WHAT ’S IT BEEN LIKE? Although this unprecedented season has been challenging, it has actually made room for us to reach out in some ways we hadn’t expected. As the old saying goes: “Adversity is the mother of invention.”

During the shut down, many of us have discovered Zoom and Facetime to be invaluable tools. Jill had the opportunity to lead a small young women’s book study throughout the spring via Zoom, and through Facetime, we’ve gotten to connect with missionary friends from Thailand, Paraguay, Mexico, and Canada. As outdoor seating areas have opened up, we’ve had the opportunity to meet one on one for coffee with many individuals, filling up most afternoons. And we’ve delighted in inviting couples over for dinner, to simply sit across the table with one another and really listen to each other’s hearts.

One of our churches in town decided to go to a home church format, calling it House-to-House.

We’ve joined with 2 other couples to invite, host, lead worship, teach, and pray for those weekly Sunday morning services. We’ve also had the privilege of joining with several other couples to meet weekly for prayer – praying for our nation as well as individual needs as they arise. It has been powerful and revitalizing!!

Another opportunity this season has afforded is the time and focus for writing. For many years, we’ve sensed an invitation from God to use our pens to “speak” for Him. We’ve been enjoying the time to do just that – working on a number of projects and publications that we hope to make available in the next year! We’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, hopefully this newsletter gives you a small taste of some of what we’ve been working on.

VISITING LONG TIME FRIENDS & SUPPORTERS, TIM & SUE GRIESER, IN NC

JILL AND ALLISON DRESSED FOR QUARANTINE.

GEOFF WAS INVITED TO SPEAK AT THE INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN VISUAL MEDIA (ICVM) CONFERENCE VIA ZOOM

OFFICIATING ELI & GABBY BETTS WEDDING

roots ROOTS

(BY JILL) I had a conversation in July with a friend who was troubled by the number of his Christian friends whose love for Jesus seemed to be “growing cold”. This was due, in his mind, to governmental COVID-19 restrictions on meeting together for Sunday morning church services, Bible studies…That must have been on my mind as I slept that night because I woke up the next morning with this phrase running through my mind: “Seasons of drought ref lect the health of the root system.” Wondering if that statement was even true, I went on a treasure hunt through the Scriptures to get God’s heart on the subject.

The first verse I read was in Luke 8:13, where Jesus was describing the meaning of the parable of the sower and the seed, in particular the seed that fell on the rocky soil: “The seed falling on the gravel represents those who initially respond to the word with joy, but soon afterward, when a season of harassment of the enemy and difficulty come to them, they wither and fall away, for they have no root in the Truth and their faith is temporary.”

I pictured how easy it could be to be lulled into believing that one’s faith is healthy and strong while in the midst of a Sunday morning service or while being busy with church activities and programs. But what happens when all that comes to a screeching halt - when we are left alone with our faith, based not on outward activity, but on the vitality of our inward connection to the Source?

I went on to read in Jeremiah 17: “Blessed is the man who trusts in Me, God, the woman who sticks with God. They’re like trees, replanted in Eden, putting down roots near the rivers. Never a worry through the hottest of summers, never dropping a leaf; serene and calm through droughts, bearing fresh fruit every season. The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.”

Then I read online that “Some tree roots probe hundreds of feet deep searching for water…Droughts can send roots many meters down to the saturated zone just above the groundwater table.”

As I read these verses and researched information, a sober-ness settled into my heart. I felt as if God was saying that He was redeeming this time of great difficulty, using it to expose our hearts. Not to condemn or shame us, but to woo us into letting our roots sink deeper, deeper, deeper than they’ve been, maybe in a long while, turning the hardship of the pandemic into an invitation to “come away”. I felt as if He was calling us to the secret place of intimacy with Him. It is so easy to mistake outward activity with deep connection. I sensed that He was inviting us all the way back to the simplicity of our First Love with Him. Is it possible that God could take what the enemy meant to steal, kill and destroy and turn it into the greatest heart revival we’ve ever known – as individuals and across the globe? I believe it is.

I wrote in my journal that day: “Papa, Papa, during this season of drought, beckon our roots to go deeper, to the very Source of Living Water, which is You. As you reveal our hearts to us, let us respond to your call to come into Your arms!”

The Psalmist put it best I think, “God I invite Your searching gaze into my heart.

Examine me through and through; find everything that may be hidden within me. Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares. See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on, and lead me back to Your glorious, everlasting ways – the path that brings me back to You.” (Psalm 139:23-24, TPT)

BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO TRUSTS IN ME, GOD, THE WOMAN WHO STICKS WITH GOD. THEY’RE LIKE TREES, REPLANTED IN EDEN, PUTTING DOWN ROOTS NEAR THE RIVERS.

CHANGE

(BY GEOFF) Some say it’s not possible, at least in the long run. I think I think it is, but it doesn’t come easy.

It takes Herculean effort. And not from without so much as within. The truest transformation of any lasting sort comes from change of heart and soul, and that requires the inner stuff the likes of which is rarely experienced because it pushes us to the brink of trust. To stand at the edge of this cliff and f ling oneself over feels insane. Who does that? It’s crazy! Feels risky.

There is a letting go. A surrender. If it takes place, even in limited degrees, it begins to grow freedom seemingly out of nowhere. And if we give our whole selves? Well, now there and then is an original creation moment. Like at the beginning when a Word was spoken and an explosion of light happened from nothing. We all secretly wish this to happen. It’s the original song sung in our hearts. It’s the drawing. The pull to the Source.

So I’ll say a prayer for you today. For the courage to say the truth to yourself. For hope to motivate you to open up your heart again. For grace to leave your heart in an Others’ hands. So that you can be truly known and loved and seen, then hosed off and healed. And so, changed. Love does this well. He is it. Just like a Hercules. And He made us for it.

(I know this prayer. I pray it for myself. Not on all days. Only on the best ones.) “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present.

And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” - C. S. LEWIS

ORPHAN HEARTS

(BY JILL) Has anyone else been experiencing angst over the division in our country – political, racial, religious? It’s like a tug of war that no one wins, just angry, defensive, fearful conf lict between opposing viewpoints. I’ve tried to stay off social media where the discord tends to rage especially loudly. But notifications from friends’ posts keep popping up on my phone. I feel my own defensiveness rising up inside.

One morning, I woke with my mind and heart just swirling over all of this. Knowing full well the only place to find true peace, I grabbed my steaming cup of coffee and hurried to my favorite chair and began to pour out my angst to God: “Father, what do I do with this anxious heart? How do I respond to a world around me in love and not in defensive anger?”

Into the stillness, I sensed Him whisper to my heart: “See the person behind the words. Look

with My eyes and you will see the person I see.”

Faces of people I knew came to my mind, people who had vocalized words of anger. But slowly, through Father’s eyes, I began to see the actual persons - individuals brimming over from pain and fear and longing and need. I saw them as little boys and little girls – people just like me who were hurt and lost and afraid.

I sensed Father saying, “Underneath all the words, your hearts are simply longing for the embrace of a Good and True Father.”

He then reminded me of the very last verses in the Old Testament, found in Malachai 4:5-6.

These are the last words spoken by God before 400 years of silence. “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful Day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers…”

400 years later, it is through an angel to Zechariah, the soon to be father of John the Baptist, that God speaks again: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John…He will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

(Luke 1:13-17) John the Baptist made ready the way for Jesus to enter the scene. And Jesus, the Son of God, came revealing God as Father!! This was unprecedented!!! And then, through the cross, Jesus made the Way for us to join Him in coming Home to the very heart of our loving Heavenly Father. (“I will come back and take you to be with Me, that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:3b) I believe with all my heart that what our world is longing for right now is a revelation of the Father’s heart. And I truly believe that we are ripe for this revelation. Into the angst and fear and unrest of our world, I believe He is inviting every one of us to receive Him in new and deeper ways as Father, finding our truest identity in being His beloved sons and daughters. No longer orphans, but sons. “How great is the Love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”

(I John 3:1) Let us pray for an outpouring of the revelation of His Father’s heart for every person on the planet, including our own, and that we would learn what it really means to “make (ourselves) at Home in (His) Love.”

(John 15:9, Msg)

“AS I HAVE LOVED YO U … ” (BY JILL) Recently I noticed something I’d never noticed before from a fairly well-known verse in the middle of John 13. “A new command I give you: ‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34) For the first time, I became aware that somehow all these years I had thought that Jesus’ new commandment was this: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

(Matthew 22:37-40) I was shocked to realize the 2 commandments in Matthew were a summarization of the Old Commandment, not the New One! So what was Jesus saying the new commandment was? As I looked closely, I saw that the difference of the new command was this: “AS I HAVE LOVED YOU!!” I immediately thought of the verse in I John 4:19: “We love Him because He first loved us!”

My epiphany was this: As good and awesome as the Old Commandment was, God knew that we could not fulfill it. Try as we might, despite a deep desire to obey God, we were incapable of it and so we failed - I failed – over and over again. Like Paul in Romans 7, I have found myself crying out so many times in my life: “What I want to do, I don’t do, but what I hate I keep doing!” (Romans 7:15) Eventually Paul pours out his broken heart to God like this: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” But the beauty of what Paul writes next is breath-taking! It’s his discovery of a brand new way of living: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of Life has set me free from the law of sin and death!” (Romans 8:1-2) The Spirit of Life is none other than the Promised Holy Spirit Who came at Pentecost and filled the disciples and, from then on, every believer in Jesus. It is that same Holy Spirit by which God pours out His Love into our hearts (Romans 5:5) and Who testifies with our spirits that we are children of God – the Spirit of sonship by Whom we cry “Abba Father”, “Papa God”!!! (Romans 8:15-16) As we learn to receive His Love being poured into our hearts, we are filled with so much love that it literally brims over into Love for God, love for ourselves, and love for the “one anothers” around us!!

The New Command of Jesus, then, could be summarized simply as this: “Live loved!” Live in the kindness, the mercy, the grace, the favor, the

FACETIME WITH FREDY & MICHELLE TALAVERA - MEXICO

affection, the belonging of the Love of God pouring into us. And as a result everything else – all the other commands of our Father – will become the fruit of our lives of Love!

As I sat with this idea of “living loved”, I kept thinking about a precious 3 year old named Goldie who is the daughter of one of our friends. She is the essence of “adorable” – fun, free, playful, thriving!! I realized she doesn’t really ever initiate love to her parents…she simply basks in the love and delight and belonging they provide for her. She simply LIVES LOVED, and the overf low is a thriving life.

What if we simply relaxed into the safety, belonging, and delight of our Father’s Love for us?

What if we stopped striving so hard to earn it, and just received it. Paul prays that we would actually be “empowered” to grasp “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that (we) would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-19)

MEXICO Finally, many of you will remember we were scheduled for a 10-day outreach to Mexico in August.

A month prior to going, we received word from the airlines that our tickets from CA to Mexico had been cancelled. With COVID-19 growing in intensity here and in Mexico, we felt reassurance from God’s heart that waiting was actually His idea. However, we are excited to announce that we’ve rescheduled that trip for January 15-25. Having just Face-timed with Pastors Fredy and Michelle of La Fuente Church, we are eager to get on the ground in Bucerias, Mexico to see what God is up to and how we can join Him. We plan to spend time meeting with Fredy and Michelle, their team and any other small group opportunities that arise. We will also be using the time to scout out what God might want to do there through Full Sail Ministries in the future.

This will continue to be our stance as we face 2021: Where are you at work God and how can we join you…in Mexico…in Cambodia…in Paraguay… and across the street?

CELEBRATING 35 YEARS OF LIFE TOGETHER!

NEEDS – PRAYER & FINANCIAL God’s affectionate whisper to “come away” is becoming the sweetest sound we know. His welcome into forgiveness of sin, relief from burdens, comfort in pain, and the safety of belonging is setting our hearts freer than they’ve ever been. And our deepest desire spills over from that connection – to continue saying yes to Him, taking the next steps on the path He is marking out for us.

“Trust in the Lord completely, and do not rely on your own opinions. With all your heart rely on Him to guide you and He will lead you in every decision you make. Become intimate with Him in whatever you do, and He will lead you wherever you go.” (Proverbs 3:5-6, TPT) The future is bright with hope and possibilities! The heartbeat of Full Sail Ministries is strong. In fact it has only grown deeper and more passionate in this challenging season.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

WOULD YOU PRAY THOSE VERSES OVER US?

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To trust Him utterly and completely To rely on Him for each decision we make going forward To remain intimately connected to Him in whatever we do

With every text, handwritten note, coffee date, phone call, Zoom meeting or in person gathering, our desire is to create safe space and un-rushed time for people to experience deep, intimate connection with God. Your partnership toward that end is invaluable. For over 20 years now, so many of you have stood with us, linking arms to see His Kingdom come in the here and now. Our gratitude for you bubbles up into exuberant praise to God. Would you continue to partner with us through your prayers and financial support? In these challenging, uncertain times, our lives are still securely anchored to the God of Hope. He has been faithful and will continue to be faithful.

If you want to be a part of what God is doing through Full Sail Ministries, please use the enclosed envelope or visit www.fullsail.org/give to make a monthly or one time financial gift. If you’d like to give a gift in kind, please email Geoff at Geoff@FullSail.org or call us at 559-627-8202. We are grateful for your support.

PICS AND ART CREDS:

Front Cover: mjrn Photography - Unsplash.com Back Cover: Jack Seeds - Unsplash.com “Roots” art: Allison Ludlow

DON’T BE AFRAID (BY GEOFF) It had been a long time since He was heard from.

The great Selah.

The silence was deafening, As the whole of creation seemed to hold their collective breath.

Then it happened.

First to deliver on a promise to an old man, Then to a few seekers from Asia, Then, finally, to a few sheep-herders on a hill outside of town.

God broke the long night of quiet with three words.

Words to begin our next long conversation.

“Don’t be afraid.”

So, after all these years, Let’s not be.