in mask and in spirit and in truth.

I was driving us all home from gymnastics on Wednesday, and the welcome sign out front of a large church caught my eye.

Those who worship Him must worship in mask and in spirit and in truth!

I know this was probably supposed to be a harmless, informative, amusing twist on John 4:24.

But it was the second time this week that a message has brought up a strong check in my spirit.  

Even "amusing" additions, subtractions or alterations to the Gospel should ALWAYS ring a bell, friends. What we are believing as Gospel might not BE. We've gotta KNOW the Gospel to know it!

The first time He stopped me was over that same old digital sign spanning the freeway, the one we've all seen a million times this past six months. 

Stay home, Save lives.

I've read it a hundred times without another thought. But this time, as we sped underneath, Stay home, save lives! was met by that still, small voice that somehow still rings loud and clear with four kids singing in the background:

That is not the message of the Gospel.

It caught me off guard. I began to think.

I wracked my brains, trying to recall a time that the message of the Gospel of Jesus was "stay home" or "save lives."

The very commission Jesus left us with that we call "the great one" was, in fact, the exact opposite:  GO OUT.

The very salvation we find through Christ came because God said, "My Son, it will be dangerous. It will break your heart and bleed you dry and cost you your very life. Now GO," and Jesus did NOT stay home. 

How in the world are people supposed to be tasting and seeing that God is good, to be experiencing Jesus' love incarnate (this season or any other), if we are huddled at home like the disciples were when they were still waiting....when they were waiting for the coming and empowerment of the Holy Spirit so that they could be equipped to courageously live the Gospel in the face of certain danger!

How can this broken and increasingly hopeless world find the one and only Hope we have in Jesus if we are only blogging or posting about it "safely" at home and not actually out DOING it? If missionaries throughout time had just been letter writers?  If Jesus' followers stayed with their boats?  If we are consumed with preserving our lives?...Luke 17:33.

Matt and I have gotten a LOT of flack the last many months for our "not careful" lifestyle.  

Truth is, we've been told for many, many years now that our lives are not careful enough.

I have often shrugged off our continuing determination to reach out despite covid as a weakness, with something like, "This transition has been so major, we never could have done it isolated."

That is true.  But more, our family is coming from a life of 13 years where we often had to daily navigate and cling to the line between wisdom and faith.  

What if our kid got really sick? No. There would be no reliable medical care. If someone saw the girls at school, wouldn't they be obvious targets for kidnapping? If there were complications in Ben's birth...if we were in a serious car accident...if there was a major revolt...if people were starving and stormed our campus...if we got cholera...if there was another earthquake...what about the hurricanes...what about all the political problems...what if Matt never made it back from South Korea...Russia...the voodoo temple? 

Bottom line was always this: we could be 'safe', which would require us to not be missionaries in Haiti nor to preach the gospel when opportunities arose, or, we could be faithful to His calling and trust Him.

We learned quickly that if "safety" was our goal, focus and temptation-to-idol, then we could NOT be the poured out, burned out, emptied out missionaries that we felt Biblically-led to be. It wasn't a safe Gospel we were carrying to an "unsafe" place. It wasn't a "safe" Gospel we were preaching! It was the kind of Gospel that got many of its' heroes killed, imprisoned, tortured and crucified, the one that requires taking up a cross and laying down our lives.

The Gospel is not safety honoring, nor even safety concerned. It never has been. 

It speaks about being courageous. It speaks about going and preaching and living and loving boldly. It speaks about impending persecution and hunger and sickness and pain, it speaks about to die is gain.

It is GOD honoring and nothing else, and His ways are NOT our ways.

As we have prayed and read and talked (and prayed) and lived out life on the "wisdom and faith" line now on this equally challenging mission field, it has seemed clear to us, for us, that we could : 1) stay home and isolate from our neighbors and co-workers because we love them --or-- 2) invite our neighbors, co-workers, people we've met at churches and on the street and through our new friends and neighbors and co-workers into our home and lives to build relationships, to pray for them, to feed them and to learn how to love them well because we love them.   

Coming from where we are coming from, this choice didn't feel like much of a choice. 

Please hear me out. We have some 16 masks (none of which Sofie can EVER find). We wear masks every single time anyone or place asks us to, faithfully, and with good attitudes. If someone asks for our shirt, the Word tells us to give them our coat as well with a smile, and I pray that we NEVER be found out fighting for our personal rights...believing strongly as Christ-followers that we have none to defend.  

Haiti taught us to work hard to honor others and their requests and thoughts and concerns for the sake of the Gospel, no matter what we think.  I wore a skirt every single day for 13 years, friends. We can honor others well, for His glory, even in ways we are not personally convicted nor in agreement with nor even comfortable with.  

We have cancelled playdates if someone had a sniffle. People who do not want to be around us because we haven't isolated in our homes, we would never chase after. We haven't forced one person to spend time with us or to accept any invitation.  We have taken meals to families with covid and left it at the door.  I have a dear, so isolated friend down the street who still won't let me in her home nor will come in mine, but man, have I stood for hours on her front stoop, and man, have we worn out my porch swing. 

We must honor those we love as a testimony of Him who loved first...and as Christ-followers that must be EVERYONE.

But man alive.

We have been in churches, in masks, 10 feet apart, totally distanced and sanitized and registered and had our temperature's taken at the door...and still had people, believers, scatter away like we had the plague.  We have been not spoken to, as brand new people, by anyone.  Ushered quickly out the moment the sermon is finished to the parking lot, where everyone has run for their cars.  

We have watched believers stop giving, stop serving, stop going, stop churching, though the needs pile high around us and hunger for Him gnaws.

This is not being devoted to one another in love. This is not laying down our lives for one another.  This is not sharing the Gospel. This is not faith above fear. This is not being poured out like a drink offering.

I don't care what I see in the world. The world is the worldliest world of worlds just like it's always been and continues to be, and I have no expectations other than that.  I do NOT understand why we continue to put our faith and hope in it, and I DO understand why when we do, so much depression and despair and fear follows.

But the church (that's just us, brothers and sisters), the church cannot add "in mask" to the Gospel! The church cannot add "at a distance" to "lay down your lives."  The church cannot honor safety above salvation.  

We cannot be the priest and the Levite hurrying past the painfully, obvious wounded and dying world because we want to spare them our germs...and in doing so have robbed them of ourSELVES...Christ in us, the Hope of Glory.

I'm not calling for anything crazy that the Gospel is not already calling for. We cannot take it in pieces and promote the ones that work for our current time, as if "this day and age and situation" is in any way new or confusing or an exception for God. 

These are NOT "weird times" to the Lord. These are lost times. Dark times. 

And our God has a Light for that...it is US.

Wear a mask, wash your hands, stay home when you're sick, do what you need to do based on health issues, WHATEVER. But don't STOP.

We canNOT hide the living / breathing / eating together / washing each other's feet / giving / pouring out / sitting with sinners / touching the lepers LIGHT under a bushel (no!) because the signs above the streets continue to tell us to.  

Sigh. If you are mad at me, I'm sorry :(  I hate upsetting people, or even suggesting something that might be upsetting to people.  

But I fear in this season we are valuing "safety" above all else...and the pursuit of safety can be a false god that gives nothing back, feeds us fear, offers excuses over freedom, isolates us from His body and His mission field, and ultimately draws us away from Him.

I am not telling you what to do with the Gospel, family.  

But the Gospel? The Gospel is telling us what to do with the Gospel, beloved.  

Forget EVERYTHING I say and just be in it.  It speaks to this...it speaks to today.

I pray that we are IN IT. 

I pray that He helps us as we study it. 

And I pray that He gives us all the wisdom and courage we need to LIVE it, boldly and with abandon...now and always.

Dear brothers and sisters

when troubles of any kind come your way

consider it an opportunity for great joy.

When your faith is tested,

your endurance has a chance to grow.

So let it grow, for when your endurance is developed,

you will be complete, not lacking in anything.

If you need wisdom,

ask our generous God, and he will give it to you.

He will not rebuke you for asking.

But when you ask Him, make sure your faith is in God alone.

Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled

as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.

Those whose loyalty divided between God and the world

will be unstable in everything that they do.

James 1