God – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

August 22, 2024August 21, 2024

Street Beat

One of the most astonishing episodes of my life happened in 1995, stemming from a phone call from New York’s Lake Ontario region.

“Hi there Jerry, this is David Spencer. Would you like to go to China?”

David’s grandfather had long ago pioneered the mission agency through which we had served in Africa through our younger years. David was in pursuit of friends to pull together a low-profile short-term prayer team.

From the early 1970s a phenomenon (tagged later on as ‘Prayer Walking’) had been evolving, expanding its reach year after year. No single group or organization or church had a corner on this partnering-with=God practice. Prayer-walkers – hundreds, then later on thousands of small bands of intercessors donning all manner of footwear – had been taking to the streets all across broad sectors of the globe. Missiologists, evangelists and church planters took note, sensing that a burgeoning prayer movement was clearly afoot. The work of a sovereign, compassionate, pursuing God.

By the 1990s bands of such purposeful intercessors (Jesus-followers directing their praying outward toward the needs of others) had lined up at airline ticket counters. It was as though the world’s nations, many of them hosts to entire people groups still uninformed of the existence of Jesus, had seized the hearts of these travelling travailers.

Our prayer-journeying team (of Canadian and American heritage) numbered twenty and rangwd in age from 19 years to 81.

From our Hong Kong Port of Entry where orientation sessions were taken in through the fog of jet lag, we navigated thousands of miles by train, plane and automobile, by country bus and the occasional rickshaw. Add to this the mile on mile prayer-walking stints along strategic venues of five ‘gateway cities’, the occupants of one such urban center numbering sixteen million strong. Indeed, no town whose sidewalks welcomed the touch of our collective shoe leather boasted populations of less than three million.

An eye-opening, soul-stirring adventure of a lifetime.

Soon, I would take in a piece of news from a Pennsylvania farming community set to catapult my mind to jaw-dropping wonder. Leaving me happily puzzling in the general direction of the heavens,

What manner of God are you?

August 1, 2024

Recovery Road

Week after week our men’s step group gathered.

One by one, unhealthy elements of our lives found their way to the light. These elements (whether imposed by others or self-inflicted) defined the things that could now get brought openly before the Lord and one another.

As with the peeling away of onion skins, our interior selves gradually emerged. Confession – issuing from a humility of heart that only God can bestow – buoyed our confidence in his trustworthiness.

Because of his astounding love for broken persons caught up in vices of sexual impurity (scripture’s listings are long and precise), Christ calls his sons and daughters to identify and renounce our self-justifying games. I was summoned by the Spirit’s drawing to call a spade a spade. Enough with avoidance! As put forward in the lyrics of the old spiritual, “It’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer”.

Owning and confessing my personal moral wrongs was, I knew, necessary for turning toward and gaining freedom. Victory was in reach, but only through the strength of God’s promised Spirit and Word. This I had come to know. I longed for freedom as much as anything I could long for.

Frankly, I found it easier earlier on to open up about the bad things that had been done to me, than to come clean about my own repeated cycles of willful sinning. The process toward freedom was marked by the proverbial rhythm: “Two steps forward, one step back”. Factored in, was a continued revisiting of our compassionate God, calling out to him in fervent appeal. He did not disappoint. Not ever.

Of the various recovery communities spread across the North American landscape, the Step programs that seem to bear the more promising fruit are those calling for vulnerable, courageous action.

While (mercifully) my particular brokenness had not translated into outright infidelity (though heart iniquity was another matter), there was no side-stepping the element of straight-up confession. Not only before God and my brothers, but in contrition to my dearest and nearest family members – not the least, the precious wife of my youth. The distracting nature of a divided mind had far too many times deprived my family of a focused attentiveness.

STEP 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.*

May 9, 2024

Poised

Mr. Tang’s baptism was warmly celebrated at our Thirty-fourth and Garnett Rd Church. Pastor Steve Morgan administering the sacred rite. The sacrament affirmed, as for so many others across the centuries, evidence of a brand new identity. Mr. Tang was a reborn creation, his old life yielded up in exchange for his new life of Christ within.

How wonderful of the Lord, bringing a precious man with essentially no knowledge of Jesus from the far side of the globe to this place – in this time – for this purpose.

People are different from one another. An understatement. In each of our world’s seven-billion-plus souls, there is written a unique human story. And, while every story varies, all our journeys pulse with deep yearnings. Amazingly, the Designer God who formed us can meet us where we are – poised and ready to lead us toward himself. Some of our personal narratives may feature, as with Mr. Tang, a case of disentangling from chemical substances. Step by slow step our transformation gains traction. We may suffer setbacks. He is faithful still.

For others, the prevailing vice is the obsessive drive to excel in education or business. Human beings have a notorious capacity for succumbing to hard-driving taskmasters.

Our friend, Nguyen, from Southeast Asia pursued a common aim in the world of higher education, to advance as a leading scholar in his chosen field.

One evening at the student activities center an English conversation volunteer introduced Nguyen to a series of fantasy pieces. One of these featured a wardrobe and a lion and a witch. Nguyen’s own narrative was poised to turn a corner.

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024

Stated Intent

A brilliant and beloved Southern California professor was fond of urging his fellow believers to live life on purpose, employing principles which he dubbed VIM.

Those lives that bear the marks of wholeness and flourishing for the good, Dallas Willard contended, tend to stem from persons who have firmly embraced Vision (the first letter of the acronym).

Alongside Vision come Intention and Means. Our infant ministry on the Tulsa campus – testing its wobbly legs with gangly stops and starts that are common to the very young – had started hammering out our Intention piece.

Just what were we sensing that God actually wanted? What would bring a ready smile to his magnificent countenance?

Jim Garton and I set out to give it our best in crafting a mission statement. It was clear that International Student Ministries needed one.

What shall we count as ISM’s Intention (the aim or aims that could be counted on to mark us and keep us grounded and focused through coming years). While we understood that a mission purpose can be tweaked and that often the best of aims can meet with course corrections, we felt daily the gravity of this assignment. It weighed on us.

At long last, with a lot of needed grace from above, we landed the plane.

The stated purpose carried two crucial features, neither of which could be realized apart from the other. Students needed to be able to enjoy the assurance that they are genuinely welcomed and cared about. Relationship must be key, with Christ’s tangible love and presence the heartbeat of it all.

The team’s next newsletter to be rolled out would herald our reason for being. Our Intention:

International Community Outreach exists to glorify God by meeting practical and spiritual needs of international students, through acts of service and through the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

With our stated mission now in place, all that remained was to live it out!

This was to take some doing.

January 4, 2024January 3, 2024

The Qualifier

“God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.”

It was a quote I had heard years before. Now, like small fragments of glowing embers in a fire pit being newly-roused by a stout breeze, the phrase was poised to ignite afresh. And just in time.

A lot of my life had been marked by self doubt. I fell short of one of those most desirable qualities (according to popular motivational speakers) for achieving success. Self-confidence. Oddly enough, the Christian tradition which had most shaped my spiritual life and worldview had been often given to bold and assertive, ‘you’ve got-this!’ declarations. “I can do all things…” “I am more than a conqueror…” And even, “Give me this mountain!” – a bold claim voiced by an 80-year-old, battle-scarred vet. Caleb. There was something beautiful about my growing- up years in such an upbeat climate of a believing community. Such confident, faith-fueled declarations (drawn straight out of sacred text) were even then serving to deepen in me a much-needed trust in God that could come into play way down the road. I was just not very aware of it.

— Hwy 169

Cruising along the busy Tulsa expressway one afternoon, I listened half-attentive to music pulsing through the car radio. I was at the moment right in the middle of head-talk.

“What an opportunity, international outreach right within the heart of Tulsa, Okla!” Countered by, “Right … but you? Really?” A voice inside my brain objected, then continued, “These are really bright scholars from across the world, many in advanced fields of the sciences. What do you know? What qualifies you?”

The music piece on the radio ended. In that moment, in the middle of my cerebral – emotional tug-of-war, the DJ’s voice broke in – “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I later heard that the poignant statement was traced to Theodore Roosevelt. Regardless, this was my first-ever time to take it into my ears.

Astonished is too mild a term. In that moment I was, as our British friends would put it, gobsmacked.

August 24, 2023August 25, 2023

Means Aplenty

The thing that sparked my interest in guitar was my brother’s interest in guitar (a trait of the junior sibling).

A 25 cent chord book (fingering charts included) paired together with a nine-dollar second-hand acoustic was our father’s investment in us launching our musical enterprise. Tim, giving diligent attention to the chord book, taught himself. And tutored me along as he went. The ‘two-bit’ resource proved priceless.

That modest publication with its folk songs and fingering charts was vital for our picking-and-grinning advancement. Its few pages helped transform my brother, a teenaged guitarist-wannabe, into an effective musician.

In much the same way effective (gratifying, fruit-bearing) communion with God lies within easy reach of any believer. Any who with willing heart chooses in good faith to simply practice.

Praying the words of a select few lines of a Scripture Psalm over and over. Pondering a phrase or a single word. Expressing this or that fervent heart cry as though it were penned by the one now reading and voicing it. This tool alone has helped bring many over time into lives of vibrant communion in God.

Without notes and chords in place the music room lies silent. Without the apprentice’s heart-strings brought to movement in prayer, no life of flourishing in Jesus will bloom.

Finally, discovering that the Christian is not called on to pray perfect prayers brings unspeakable relief. God goes so far as to let us know we are, in fact, quite ignorant when it comes to the spiritual practice we call prayer. What comfort! No need to fake it.

Without apology God reminds us via a terse confession of his tentmaking apostle, “We do not know what to pray for as we ought”*.

With this truth in mind Christ’s apprentices have the door of a whole toolshed flung wide open before them. His treasure-trove of tools (our means) is not restricted to the book of Psalms. Talking with God in our own personal words (nothing fancy, please!) we also have full permission to give voice to a host of prayers offered up across the pages of Scripture.

Consider this.

How might you feel knowing that a friend or family member was earnestly interceding the following for you, “that he might know the love of Christ. . . that she may be filled with all the fulness of God.”?* Be assured, God would be more than pleased our invoking as our own, Paul’s petition. For anyone whose name or image might show up on the radar of our petitioning heart.

August 10, 2023

Super Model

Our role model, Jesus, was intentional at the start of his mornings, carving out space and time to personally give himself to the direct presence of the Father. We in our day might label this as his quiet time. Regardless, the action was predictable. Conversing with God is a thing he looked forward to, this life rhythm of communion.

Inhaling and exhaling air is an activity we (as did Jesus) practice a lot while seldom ever consciously thinking about it. Breathing comes automatically. In his repeated ‘practice’ of meeting with God upon his daily risings, Jesus had grown to ‘automatically’ pray. Not robotically, as in responding to external commands, but meeting with his Abba Father as a much-beloved offspring. He (unlike me whose mind far too easily might get hijacked by distraction) purposely – eagerly? – pushed aside the many lesser attractions vying for attention.

Nothing going on around Jesus on any given occasion commanded his attention more than nearness to Abba. Communing with the father trumped all.

The Spirit of Jesus invites us, his beloved apprenticing friends, to this same lifestyle he enjoyed while navigating the many winding, hilly terrains of earth’s pilgrimage. He really does.

Christlike living, simply put, involves prayer-centered living.

Jesus’s predictable beginning-of-day habit of prayer was no less familiar to him than his other common practices – breakfasting, teeth-cleaning, sandal-strap latching.

Doesn’t it seem reasonable that apprentices of Jesus are those persons who regularly apply themselves in patterning their lives after him? In dependence on him, routinely employing those practices that clearly marked his own life rhythms.

Summing up. It is not complicated. The call of the disciple is to,

(1) Engage the common practices that he, the son of man, routinely undertook

(2) Often ask Jesus for his help in putting in place a practice (such as prayer in its varied forms)

(3) Mark out a space where, upon waking each new day, the practice gets underway.

Remember. The disciple is not one who faultlessly follows, but one who follows the faultless One. Receiving from his table generous servings of grace at every step.

August 3, 2023August 3, 2023

Smart Steps

“If God wanted me to be a morning person, he would cause the sun to rise later in the day.” A good many people today might share this sentiment.

While the amusing line can strike a sympathetic chord in some, we would likely all benefit from at least giving thought to a practice common in Jesus’ day-by-day living.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.*

When we think of it, every new day gets its start in the morning. A no-brainer insight, but one which can help us engage a common-sense truth if we are willing.

Morning persons or not, each and every day begins when we wake from sleep to launch (sometimes maybe shuffle) into it.

Jesus’ personal practice was to rise from sleep (in that normal way his fellow humans routinely do). Shortly after waking Jesus engaged his will to consciously direct his thoughts. Toward God. He was intentional at the start of his day, carving out a space and a time to individually give himself to the direct presence of the Father. We, in our day, might label it his quiet time. Regardless what we name it, this action of Jesus was predictable. Conversing with God is a thing he looked forward to. He would never consider choosing not to.

Inhaling and exhaling air is an activity we (as did Jesus) practice a lot, while almost never thinking about it. Breathing comes automatically. In his repeated ‘practice’ of meeting with God on his daily rising, Jesus had grown to pray ‘automatically’. Not as a robot responding to external commands, but as a much-beloved offspring. He purposely – eagerly as well – set aside those many lesser attractions, lesser voices clamoring for his attention and time. My mind by contrast can often get hijacked by relentless distraction.

Nothing going on around Jesus on any given occasion commanded his attention more than this. Communing with the father trumped all.

Jesus invites us, his beloved apprenticing friends, into much the same kind of lifestyle he enjoyed while navigating the many winding and hilly terrain of earth’s pilgrimage. Christlike living, simply put, is prayer-centered living.

Hanging out with God was a centerpiece in his “being-about-my-father’s-business”. This predictable first-of-the-day habit was no less familiar to him than other common practices – breakfasting, teeth-cleaning, sandal-lacing.

.Anyone acquainted at all with Jesus Christ knows that he understood the best way to live life as a human from day to day. Most of us would probably be wise to ponder this for a moment. Jesus knew the smartest kinds of practices to engage in as a flesh and blood human person. He supplies every apprentice the pattern to follow.

“And he went out. . and there he prayed”.

July 27, 2023July 26, 2023

Thirst Quenching

“When I grow up, I wanna be like _____ !”

What gives rise to this sentiment that one hears spoken at times even by grown-ups? An inner hope to become a better whomever.

The individual disciple and the gathered community of the like-minded have a thing in common – they wish to grow to be like Christ. Some groups voice it openly, “Our aim is to be. like. Jesus.” Others may signal the appetite in more reserved tones, yet their hearts yearn to grow, to mature with a character of the kind displayed in Jesus.

Apprentices to Jesus like what they see in his manner of being and doing. They long to take on those qualities more and more, to the point really of being defined by them.

The carefree farm kid is at home in the company of the good daddy. A particular setting doesn’t so much matter. Whether frolicking about barefoot on fresh-turned sod or rallying his young muscles to move a lawnmower through a stretch of Bermuda grass, he knows he is never left entirely on his own. A strong, assuring presence dwells there with him, near at hand.

An inner appetite of every Jesus-apprentice – even when not always conscious of it – is their longing for nearness. The good rabbi’s band of followers are pulled along by an inner tug to follow him closely – not letting him ‘much out of their sight’.

Not every earthly dad mirrors well the endearing qualities seen in the one Jesus called “my Father”. Yet, each person living is welcomed by him into just such a father-child closeness. We move that direction through Christ Jesus.

Whether a veteran disciple or a newly signed-on apprentice, the person choosing Christlikeness is growing in the work of training their eyes on this one whom they worship. They are finding, too, that a good beginning point is at the coming of every morning.

“O God, you are my God; early will I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, in a dry and thirsty land with no water.”*

April 6, 2023April 6, 2023

‘Aspiring’

Jesus regularly forms his followers, those whose hearts are poised to grow into his likeness. He just waits on us to make a move. The apprentice grows more like his master by observing and doing the things his master (trainer/mentor) does.

Jesus modeled the practice of praying, for instance. Do you, like me, ever wonder why so many preachers, teachers and scholars write and speak on the subject of prayer? Well, Jesus started it.

Jesus not only taught on prayer. He prayed. A lot.

A. W. Tozer notes that Jesus prayed early in the morning and, at times, throughout all the night. That he prayed both before and after the great events of his life, and prayed “when life was unusually busy”.

Wherever you and I happen to be just now on our discipleship journey, we too may come to him as his early ragamuffin followers did those centuries ago. Bringing before him our earnest appeal about talking with God,

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time* If we should search for a single line to sum up a fundamental disposition present in a New Testament disciple, we might begin with that phrase.

It was he who spoke of us walking alongside him, donning an ‘easy yoke’. It is Jesus who stirs the imagination, offering a word picture of fruit-producing branches. Each branch, each Christ-follower, draws a plentiful supply of life straight from him – the vine. One day at a time. . one moment at a time.

Through his own frequent rhythms of being present to his Father in prayer Jesus modeled the practice for any and every one signing on as his apprentice. The Lord Jesus, more than any other human, understood prayer’s non-negotiable nature. Endurance and flourishing (two longed-for aims of any meaningful life) find their fountain in direct union with God alone. Nothing else quite works.

I am afraid I have sometimes lacked the ‘sanctified ambition’ witnessed now and then in his early disciples when their hunger surpassed their timidity. “Lord, teach us to pray”.

Those of us who count ourselves as apprentices or apprentice wannabes can thank God every day that their appeal was made. “Teach us to pray” may rank as the most worthwhile request ever voiced by any person anywhere.

Apprentices learn by copying what they see in their teacher.